NEM Overview: Sunday 10 May 2026

Spot prices across the NEM sit in the $89–$129/MWh range at 06:30 AEST, with SA at $128.89/MWh and VIC at $123.90/MWh carrying the highest regional rates. The V-SA interconnector is flowing 266.72 MW into South Australia from Victoria, with SA local generation split between 340 MW of wind and 255.71 MW of gas CCGT — no solar contribution at this hour. Queensland is the cheapest region at $89.36/MWh, with NSW not far behind at $96.81/MWh. A notable flow of 577.51 MW is moving south from QLD into NSW on QNI, approaching roughly half of the interconnector's import limit. The VIC–NSW interconnector is binding at its import limit of -18.9 MW, constraining northbound flow from Victoria into NSW.

NEM-wide renewable penetration sits at 38.3% per the gridIQ score. Tasmania is running 100% renewable at 836 MW, almost entirely hydro with minimal wind contribution, and is exporting 81.62 MW to Victoria via Basslink. SA's renewable share reaches 57.08% on the back of 340 MW of wind, with carbon intensity at 0.21 tCO2/MWh — the lowest of the mainland regions. NSW wind is contributing 175.6 MW and hydro 1,039.4 MW alongside 5,463 MW of black coal; the region's carbon intensity is 0.71 tCO2/MWh. QLD's renewable share is just 4.3% at present with solar offline overnight and 1,909 MW of black coal carrying the bulk of the 6,573 MW load. Grid stress scores at 85.5/100, reflecting the interconnector constraints and overnight demand profile.

The most operationally relevant active notice is the unplanned outage of Directlink's No. 3 leg (constraint set N-MBTE_1 active since 5 May), which continues to restrict the N-Q-MNSP1 interconnector — currently flowing only -25 MW. The Armidale No. 3 330/132 kV transformer unplanned outage from 8 May has invoked constraint set N-AR_TX, which also carries N-Q-MNSP1 on its left-hand side; traders should note this is compounding QNI transfer limits. On the positive side, the Wagga–Dinawan 330 kV double circuit was commissioned on 9 May, adding transmission capacity in the NSW south-west corridor. The MSATS 56.2 production release outage scheduled for 10:00–14:00 AEST today will take market settlement systems offline — participants should ensure any time-sensitive B2B transactions and meter data submissions are completed before 10:00 AEST.

Today's outlook is for conditions to ease through the morning as solar generation lifts across QLD and NSW — both regions show good solar potential for 11 May (15.8 and 11.9 respectively). VIC heating demand at 8.9°C with 100% cloud cover overnight will moderate as temperatures reach 17°C today with clearing skies. SA wind potential remains low through today (0.5 avg), which means gas CCGT will continue to run in support of that region's load and price spreads between SA and the eastern states are unlikely to narrow materially until wind picks up