Interconnector Watch: Tuesday 9 June 2026

The dominant feature right now is VIC1-NSW1 (Murraylink excluded — that's the Heywood/QNI complex). VIC1-NSW1 is exporting 972.87 MW from Victoria to NSW and is binding at its export limit of 972.87 MW. This ceiling is directly connected to the active V-KGKO constraint set invoked at 13:30 AEST yesterday following an unplanned outage of the Kerang–Koorangie 220 kV line. That network event tightened transfer limits across four interconnectors simultaneously — VIC1-NSW1, V-SA, T-V-MNSP1, and Murraylink — and the binding condition on VIC1-NSW1 is the clearest market expression of that constraint remaining in force. With Victoria at -$0.10/MWh and NSW at $71.75/MWh, the $71.85/MWh spread is entirely consistent with a hard export cap preventing further Victorian surplus from clearing into the higher-priced NSW market.

Basslink (T-V-MNSP1) is also binding, flowing 378.65 MW from Tasmania to Victoria at its import limit of 378.65 MW. Tasmania sits at $79.08/MWh against Victoria's near-zero price, which appears counterintuitive for this flow direction until the V-KGKO constraint is factored in — the constraint set actively limits Basslink's position as part of the broader Victorian network security envelope. Murraylink (V-S-MNSP1) is at zero flow with both import and export limits set to zero, confirming it is out of service or held offline, likely also a consequence of the V-KGKO constraint equations.

On QNI, 115.63 MW is flowing south from Queensland into NSW, with the interconnector operating at 49% of its import limit of 235.15 MW — unbound and with room to move. The QLD–NSW price spread is narrow at $0.75/MWh ($72.50 vs $71.75/MWh), which explains the modest, uncommitted flow. Directionally, Queensland is supplying NSW but the economics provide little incentive to push harder. Heywood (V-SA) carries 156.85 MW westward from Victoria into South Australia at 28% of its SA-import capacity of 558.98 MW, unbound. SA is priced at -$0.09/MWh against Victoria's -$0.10/MWh — an essentially flat spread — so the flow reflects dispatch optimisation rather than any meaningful price arbitrage. The Heywood 600 MW SA-to-VIC test limit notice from 2 June remains active but is not binding in the current flow direction.

The net picture: the Kerang–Koorangie outage and its associated V-KGKO constraint set are the pivotal market factor this morning. Two interconnectors are binding as a direct consequence, a $71.85/MWh VIC–NSW spread is locked in by that ceiling, and Murraylink is effectively off the table. Until AEMO can resolve or reclassify the Kerang–Koorangie outage and revoke V-KGKO, Victorian surplus has a constrained export path north, and the VIC–NSW spread is structurally supported for the remainder of the trading day.