Interconnector Watch: Thursday 14 May 2026

Six interconnectors are active across the NEM right now, with two binding at their export limits and driving the most significant regional price spreads of the morning.

VIC1-NSW1 (Heywood's counterpart on the main AC backbone, QNI's southern peer) is the standout: flow sits at 1,007.87 MW northward from Victoria into NSW and is binding at its export limit of 1,007.87 MW. With VIC1 priced at $54.69/MWh and NSW1 at $98.60/MWh, the $43.91/MWh spread reflects exactly what a saturated northbound interconnector produces — Victoria cannot push any additional energy into NSW to arbitrage the gap, so the price differential persists. The Heywood interconnector (V-SA) is also binding, carrying 624.14 MW westward from Victoria into South Australia and sitting at its export limit of -624.14 MW. Despite this, the VIC-SA spread is narrow at just $3.61/MWh ($54.69 vs $58.30/MWh), indicating SA's marginal plant is pricing close to Victorian levels even with the link saturated.

QNI (NSW1-QLD1) carries 44.47 MW northward into Queensland, well within its 95.32 MW export limit and non-binding. Given QLD1 is priced at $101.83/MWh against NSW1's $98.60/MWh, the modest northward flow is directionally consistent with the spread but the transfer is small relative to QNI's capacity — constrained headroom on the corridor is partly explained by the active N-AR_TX constraint set, which has been in force since the unplanned outage of Armidale No.3 330/132 kV transformer on 8 May and applies equations to N-Q-MNSP1. The Directlink leg-3 outage (active since 5 May, constraint set N-MBTE_1) further limits N-Q-MNSP1, which is currently carrying only 17 MW northward against an available export limit of 67.85 MW — both constraints are actively capping what would otherwise be stronger northward flows given the QLD premium.

Basslink (T-V-MNSP1) is at zero flow with import and export limits of 0 MW and 125 MW respectively, effectively offline or curtailed to no net transfer. Tasmania at $107.85/MWh is the highest-priced mainland-connected region on the NEM right now, and the absence of southward Basslink export into Victoria ($54.69/MWh) means that price premium is entirely ring-fenced within TAS1 — traders should note this as a disconnection between Tasmanian and mainland price signals. Murraylink (V-S-MNSP1) carries 63 MW westward into SA at its export limit of -63 MW, a non-binding but fully utilised position that provides a supplementary path alongside Heywood for the VIC-SA corridor. No active constraint notices apply directly to Basslink or Murraylink flows at this interval.