Regional Outlook — VIC1: Tuesday 26 May 2026

The Victoria spot price sits at $144.06/MWh at 06:30 AEST, up sharply from the $10–$21/MWh range that dominated the midday and afternoon periods and the sub-$36/MWh readings through the early evening. The evening ramp has been steep: prices climbed from $8.94/MWh at 04:00 AEST through $87–$110/MWh by 06:00 AEST before accelerating to $163–$165/MWh in the 06:20–06:25 AEST intervals ahead of the current dispatch. Total demand sits at 5,392 MW, well below the overnight peak of around 6,874 MW recorded at 18:00 AEST, consistent with typical winter morning load recovery still building toward the breakfast peak.

The generation mix at 06:30 AEST is dominated by brown coal at 4,666 MW, with wind contributing 1,017 MW, gas OCGT at 266 MW, battery discharging at 4 MW, and hydro at just 0.5 MW. Solar is offline at this hour. Renewables are contributing 17.16% of generation — a marked step down from the 38–39% renewable penetration recorded during the late-morning and midday solar window earlier in the trading day. Carbon intensity currently sits at 0.9852 tCO2/MWh, the highest reading of the day, having risen steadily from a daytime low of around 0.74 tCO2/MWh as wind generation eased and brown coal held firm through the evening and overnight period.

Pre-dispatch forecasts point to continued price elevation through the morning peak. The 07:01 AEST pre-dispatch run has VIC1 targeting $196.41/MWh for the 07:00 AEST interval and $197.34/MWh for 07:30 AEST. Multiple successive pre-dispatch runs across the past two hours are converging in the $187–$199/MWh range for those intervals, indicating high confidence in elevated prices through the winter breakfast peak. Forecasts for 08:00–09:30 AEST (local) remain in the $110–$130/MWh band before easing further into the morning. Traders and large consumers with flexible load should treat the next 60–90 minutes as a sustained high-price window.

Two market notices are directly relevant to Victoria today. AEMO's constraint notice 144142 confirms that from 10:00 AEST this morning, dynamic rating forecasting will be enabled on the Murraylink interconnector constraint equations VSML_RAT_LIM_DYN and SVML_RAT_LIM_DYN, affecting VIC–SA transfer limits in pre-dispatch and PASA — participants modelling VIC–SA flows should update their formulations accordingly. A separate inter-regional transfer notice (144141) remains active for the Koorangie–Wemen 220 kV line outage, with the V-KOWE constraint set still invoked, constraining VIC1-NSW1 and interconnected flows. Grid stress is scored at 66.5/100, reflecting the combination of elevated prices, tightening renewable penetration, and active network constraints on both the SA and NSW borders.