Regional Outlook — VIC1: Monday 25 May 2026

The Victoria spot price sits at $110.50/MWh as of 06:25 AEST, with total demand at 5,358 MW. Scanning the past 24 hours of trading, prices oscillated between a low of $21.41/MWh (17:50 AEST) and a peak of $130.00/MWh (17:00 AEST the prior evening), with a rough 24-hour average settling near $93–95/MWh — placing the current print materially above that average and reflecting typical winter evening ramp pressure. Demand earlier touched 6,923 MW at the morning peak (17:50 AEST on the price data clock, equating to approx 07:50 AEST) before easing through the midday trough to below 4,400 MW, and is now climbing again on the back of cool winter temperatures — 9.9°C with 100% cloud cover and a heating demand index of 8.1.

The generation mix is dominated by brown coal at 4,566 MW, supplying approximately 77% of dispatched output at this interval. Wind is contributing 1,093 MW (around 18.5%), battery storage is discharging at 232 MW (roughly 4%), and hydro is providing a negligible 0.52 MW. Solar output is zero, consistent with the overnight trading window and near-total cloud cover forecast to persist today (98% average cloud cover, solar potential of just 0.2). Gas OCGT and CCGT are both at zero MW. Total renewable penetration sits at 22.5% per the latest carbon data, a modest lift from the 16–17% range recorded in the early hours of this morning's trading window when wind generation was lower. Carbon intensity is 0.9455 tCO2/MWh, down from a session high of 1.0292 tCO2/MWh recorded around 02:25 AEST when renewables were at their softest penetration — the improvement tracks directly with the increase in wind output across the morning.

Predispatch forecasts for the 07:00 AEST half-hour (21:00 UTC target) are converging tightly around $110.50/MWh, with the most recent runs from 20:01 UTC confirming that level. The 07:30 AEST half-hour (21:30 UTC) shows slightly more spread, with forecasts ranging from $110.50 to $122.07/MWh, suggesting some upside price risk as demand continues its evening ascent. Load optimisation windows flag materially cheaper opportunities from 10:00 AEST onward (11:00 UTC), with forecast prices dropping to the $10.50–$25/MWh range through the overnight period into tomorrow morning — consistent with historical overnight brown coal baseload surplus patterns. Wind potential remains very low today (index 0.1 currently, 2.1 average for the day), so renewable penetration is unlikely to improve significantly unless wind picks up.

Two active market notices have direct or indirect bearing on Victorian interconnector capability. Notice 144141 (active) flags an inter-regional transfer limit variation on the Koorangie–Wemen 220 kV line in VIC, with constraint set V-KOWE invoked at 11:30 AEST on 25 May — this constrains flows on V-SA, VIC1-NSW1, T-V-MNSP1, and