Regional Outlook — SA1 — Friday 8 May 2026

The spot price in South Australia sits at $107/MWh as of 06:30 AEST, with total demand at 1,299 MW. That price is consistent with the sustained elevated band that has dominated SA since around 17:00 AEST yesterday, when prices locked into the $103–$123/MWh range and have barely shifted since. The contrast with the early-hours session is stark: between roughly 01:00 and 06:45 AEST, prices traded at or below $5/MWh — including multiple negative intervals down to -$4/MWh — as overnight demand fell to a trough near 1,050 MW and wind generation kept supply pressure elevated. The 24-hour average across the full session has been dragged well above the overnight lows by the persistent morning-through-evening price band, leaving today's effective average in the $70–$80/MWh range.

The current generation mix is gas-dominated. Gas CCGT is contributing 208 MW and gas OCGT a further 81 MW, for a combined gas output of approximately 289 MW. Wind is generating 62 MW and solar is at zero — consistent with pre-dawn conditions and a cloudy 59% cloud cover at 13.2°C. Renewable penetration sits at just 17.71% at this interval, a marked pullback from the overnight high of around 80% when wind carried the bulk of supply and pushed prices negative. Carbon intensity is 0.44 tCO2/MWh, the highest reading in the dataset, reflecting the current gas-heavy dispatch profile. The daily outlook for today shows average wind potential remaining low (1.3 out of scale) and zero average solar potential under 76% average cloud cover, so a significant renewable recovery during daylight hours is unlikely — carbon intensity is expected to remain elevated relative to the overnight lows through the morning and afternoon.

Predispatch forecasts for the 07:00 AEST (21:00 UTC) half-hour are consolidating in the $107–$120/MWh range across recent runs, with the latest 06:01 AEST run pointing to $107/MWh. Earlier runs this morning had forecasts as high as $122/MWh for that interval, and the 08:30–09:00 AEST (22:30–23:00 UTC) half-hours are similarly tracking $103–$107/MWh. From 09:30 AEST onward, some predispatch runs show prices softening toward $73–$79/MWh as overnight demand eases, though the bulk of runs still cluster around $103–$107/MWh. The 10:00–11:30 AEST window (00:00–01:30 UTC Saturday) shows scattered forecasts dipping to the $49–$52/MWh range in some runs, suggesting the possibility of a price step-down as demand falls away — consistent with last night's overnight pattern.

No active market notices directly affect SA operations at this time. The most relevant recent SA notice is the cancellation on 6 May of a market intervention directing Origin Energy's Quarantine PS Unit 5 to synchronise for voltage control — that event is resolved. The Armidale No.3 transformer outage notice (affecting the NSW–QLD interconnector via constraint set N-AR_TX) remains active but has no direct SA implication. The MSATS system outage scheduled for 10 May 2026 from 10:00–14