Regional Outlook — VIC1: Friday 29 May 2026
Victoria's spot price sits at $10.72/MWh as of 06:30 AEST, near the market floor and representing a dramatic reversal from the evening peak period where prices reached as high as $272.66/MWh around 08:25 AEST last night. The 24-hour price trajectory tells a clear story: prices ran hot in the $110–$202/MWh band through the early morning peak (06:30–09:15 AEST last night), then progressively softened through the day as demand declined from a peak of approximately 7,175 MW down to the current 4,794 MW — consistent with a Saturday low-demand profile. Prices have held near or below $20/MWh since approximately 03:00 AEST this morning.
The current generation mix is dominated by brown coal at 3,847 MW, with wind contributing 2,027 MW and hydro 15.6 MW. Battery output is negligible at 0.06 MW. Gas (both OCGT and CCGT) and solar are at zero, reflecting the overnight period and suppressed wholesale price signal. Wind is providing 34.5% of total generation at this interval, consistent with the improving renewable penetration trend observed across the day — renewable share has lifted from around 12% during last night's peak to 34.69% now, the highest reading in the dataset. Carbon intensity sits at 0.7968 tCO2/MWh, down from a high of 1.0194 tCO2/MWh in the early morning hours, driven directly by that rising wind contribution. Today's outlook shows average solar potential of 9.3 and average wind potential of 1.3, with maximum temperature forecast at 17.2°C — heating demand will be modest and demand is unlikely to test supply margins on a Saturday.
Predispatch forecasts for the coming intervals point to continued soft pricing: the 07:00 AEST half-hour is forecast at $19.18/MWh and the 07:30 AEST interval at $19.18/MWh, with the load window data indicating near-floor pricing of $8.94–$10.50/MWh persisting through the 10:00–11:30 AEST AEST window and negative prices appearing in forecasts from approximately 12:30 AEST onwards (as low as -$12.10/MWh at the 13:00 AEST target interval). This is consistent with daytime solar generation in other regions suppressing the NEM-wide stack on a mild winter Saturday. Expect prices to remain well below $50/MWh through the middle of the day before recovering toward the $30–$50/MWh range in the late afternoon as solar drops off.
One VIC-relevant market notice is worth noting: Market Notice 144160 confirms the Heywood M1 500/275kV transformer returned to service at 09:20 AEST yesterday after a planned outage running since 25 May, with constraint set V-HYTX_M12 revoked. This restores full interconnector capacity on the VIC–SA Heywood link, improving Victoria's import/export flexibility for today. A separate active notice (144149) flags a scheduled Marketnet Firewall maintenance window today 09:30–17:00 AEST affecting Lan-2-Lan VPN participants accessing AEMO systems via the NSW datacenter; market data feeds are not expected to be interrupted