Regional Outlook — NSW1: Tuesday 16 June 2026

The NSW spot price sits at $80.10/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with total demand at 8,263 MW and rising as the morning peak builds. Reviewing the past 24 hours, prices tracked a clear winter profile: an overnight trough between roughly $24–$42/MWh from 01:00 to 05:30 AEST, a morning ramp peaking near $88.88/MWh around 04:40 and 08:25 AEST, a mid-afternoon softening into the $60–$70/MWh range, and a renewed evening climb back to current levels from 04:10 AEST onwards. The 24-hour simple average sits in the low-to-mid $70s/MWh, placing the current price modestly above that mean as the evening peak takes hold.

The generation mix at 06:30 AEST is dominated by black coal at 5,879 MW (approximately 84% of in-region generation), with hydro contributing 626 MW (9%), wind 241 MW (3.5%), solar 149 MW (2.1%), and gas OCGT 25 MW (0.4%). Battery output is negligible at 0.08 MW. Renewable penetration sits at 14.67% — the lowest point across the 24-hour window in the dataset, reflecting the absence of overnight wind strength and minimal winter solar irradiance under 98% cloud cover. For context, the same measure reached 43–44% during the overnight period when demand was below 7,000 MW and the thermal stack stepped back. Carbon intensity is 0.7501 tCO2/MWh, up sharply from an overnight low of 0.4937 tCO2/MWh at 04:00 AEST, consistent with thermal plant ramping hard into the morning peak.

Predispatch forecasts point to prices holding in the $80–$87/MWh band through to 08:30 AEST, with the interval at 07:30 AEST forecast at $87.38/MWh — the highest in the outlook. Prices are then expected to ease back through the $80–$85/MWh range across the business day before dropping to $56/MWh at 09:30 AEST and then declining to around $42/MWh through the 11:00 to 15:00 AEST window overnight, consistent with low-demand off-peak conditions. The morning ramp back to the $76–$85/MWh range is forecast to commence around 16:00 AEST tomorrow, with prices sustaining in the $79–$86/MWh band through Thursday's business hours. Load-shifting windows rated "good" are concentrated between 09:30 and 15:00 AEST tonight at $42–$56/MWh.

Two active non-conformance notices concern unit ORABESS1 — the Orana Battery Energy Storage System — which was declared non-conforming on two separate occasions at 18:25–18:40 AEST and 19:30–19:35 AEST on 16 June, with deviations of -131 MW and -415 MW respectively under constraint NC-N_ORABESS1. Both notices remain active. The MT PASA reserve notice published this morning identifies no Low Reserve Conditions across the NEM for the outlook period, providing no current reliability