Regional Outlook — SA1: Thursday 28 May 2026

The South Australia spot price sits at $103.86/MWh as of 06:30 AEST, a significant easing from the evening peak where prices repeatedly punched above $200/MWh and hit an intraday high of $299.44/MWh at 16:40 AEST. The 24-hour average across the price history runs well above $150/MWh, making the current level a meaningful reprieve. Total demand sits at 1,422 MW, down from the evening peak of around 1,935 MW recorded during the morning commute window. Wind is the dominant source in the current generation mix, contributing 944.71 MW, with gas OCGT at 369.64 MW and gas CCGT at 164.16 MW. Solar and battery are both at 0 MW given the overnight period. Renewable penetration is running at 63.9% and carbon intensity sits at 0.2169 tCO2/MWh — a sharp improvement on the 0.51–0.54 tCO2/MWh recorded during the prior evening when wind output was suppressed and gas carried a larger share of the load.

The overnight price trajectory across the load window forecasts signals a continued soft market through the early morning, with forecast prices ranging from the low-to-mid $80s/MWh at 09:30–10:00 AEST down to sub-$10/MWh and briefly negative in the 12:30–13:30 AEST window (00:30–03:30 UTC), consistent with strong overnight wind output and low demand. Pre-dispatch forecasts for the 07:00 AEST half-hour (21:00 UTC) are converging around $130/MWh, down from earlier runs that had that period as high as $221/MWh, suggesting the market has recalibrated as wind conditions clarify. Traders should note the forecast spread for the 07:30 AEST period (21:30 UTC) remains wide — recent runs range from $127/MWh to $198/MWh — indicating residual uncertainty around overnight gas dispatch and interconnector flows.

On market notices, the most directly relevant to SA is the active Murraylink constraint notice (MN 144100) relating to an unplanned Murraylink outage that invoked constraint set I-ML_ZERO. While this notice dates from 17 May, it remains active in the system; participants should verify current Murraylink transfer capability independently, as restricted import capacity via V-SA-MNSP1 limits the region's ability to draw on Victorian generation and contributed to the elevated price volatility observed through the afternoon and early evening. An SA-specific non-conformance (MN 144147) was also issued for unit LGAPBS1 on 27 May, a brief 10 MW deviation that has no ongoing operational impact. The active Murraylink dynamic rating forecast constraint update (MN 144142) enabling constraint equations VSML_RAT_LIM_DYN and SVML_RAT_LIM_DYN in pre-dispatch and PASA from 27 May is worth monitoring as it refines transfer limit modelling on the V-SA interconnector going forward.

Weather conditions are overcast with 100% cloud cover and temperatures at 12.3°C, suppressing solar potential to zero overnight and keeping heating demand modest at 5.7 units. Today's outlook (Friday 29 May, AEST) shows