Regional Outlook — VIC1: Friday 31 July 2026
Victoria's spot price sits at $102.36/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with demand at 6,231 MW. This follows an extremely volatile overnight peak — prices spiked to $529.63/MWh at 07:30 AEST yesterday evening as demand surged past 8,300 MW, before easing back through the day into a low of $65.49/MWh mid-afternoon. The current price sits well below yesterday's evening peak but above the overnight trough, reflecting the early morning demand ramp typical of a cold winter Saturday.
Generation mix is dominated by brown coal at 4,760 MW, comfortably the largest contributor against total generation of roughly 5,303 MW. Wind is supplying 344 MW, gas (OCGT) 136 MW, hydro 61 MW, and battery output is marginal at 1 MW. Solar is at zero given it's pre-dawn with 98% cloud cover currently recorded. This mix puts renewable penetration at 7.66%, near the low end of today's range — carbon intensity correspondingly sits at 1.1119 tCO2/MWh, up from the 0.87-0.98 tCO2/MWh band seen overnight when wind contributed more strongly to the mix (renewable share peaked near 23-24% around 23:00-05:30 AEST).
Predispatch forecasts point to a steep price decline through the day. AEMO's latest forecast has prices easing to $137.48/MWh by 08:00 AEST, then falling sharply into negative territory between 12:30-13:30 AEST (-$1.15/MWh), reflecting expected midday solar and wind contribution alongside softer demand. Forecast prices stay in single digits to low teens through the afternoon and evening, with a modest recovery to $101.30/MWh forecast for 18:00 AEST as demand picks up again. Weather outlook supports this — solar potential improves to 19.9% average tomorrow with cloud cover easing to 12%, though wind potential remains subdued at 1.6%.
On notices, VIC-specific items include an automated constraint set (CA_SYDS series) invoked to manage power system security on the V-S-MNSP1 and V-SA interconnector equations, still active from 28 July. A short-notice outage of the South Morang-Sydenham No.1 500kV line triggered constraint set V-SMSY from 11:00 AEST 31 July, affecting VIC-NSW interconnector flows. Separately, the Directlink NSW interconnector outage has been completed and returned to service at 14:30 AEST yesterday, easing prior transfer constraints. No non-conformance or reserve notices are currently active for VIC1 itself, though SA has seen repeated LOR1/LOR2 declarations this week worth monitoring for flow-on interconnector effects.