Regional Outlook — SA1: Saturday 1 August 2026
South Australia's spot price sits at -$4.50/MWh at 06:30 AEST, deep in negative territory as strong overnight wind output continues to outpace demand of 1,467 MW. This extends a run of negative pricing that began around 18:45 AEST yesterday evening and has held for nearly two hours straight, a sharp reversal from yesterday evening's peak of $172.95/MWh at 20:15 AEST when demand climbed above 1,950 MW. Prices troughed at -$32.21/MWh in predispatch forecasts for later this morning, before wind eases and the region swings back toward triple digits by midday.
Wind is dominating the generation mix, supplying 1,564 MW against total generation of roughly 1,608 MW, with gas CCGT contributing 42.7 MW, battery output at 1.2 MW, and solar at zero given the pre-dawn hour. This puts renewable penetration at 97.34%, among the highest readings in the current cycle, and carbon intensity down to 0.0131 tCO2/MWh — a fraction of the 0.32 tCO2/MWh peaks recorded around 10:30 AEST yesterday when wind eased and gas plant ramped to cover midday demand. The overnight carbon trend has been on a steady decline from 0.196 tCO2/MWh at 20:55 AEST yesterday to today's near-zero reading, tracking wind's build-up through the evening and overnight period.
Predispatch forecasts show prices holding negative or near-zero through the morning, with troughs of -$61.71/MWh around 04:30 AEST and -$53.99/MWh at 04:00 AEST as wind generation peaks against low demand. Prices are forecast to recover into the $40-50/MWh band by mid-morning (08:30-11:00 AEST) as demand builds, with a brief spike to $101.02/MWh forecast for 12:00 AEST before easing back to single digits and negative territory again by late afternoon and evening. Wind potential is forecast at 7.3% for today, dropping further into the week as a low-wind, high-cloud pattern sets in from 3-5 August.
Market notices show two active AEMO directions issued to AGL SA Generation's Torrens Island units (TORRB2 and TORRB3), both required to synchronise and follow dispatch targets from 11:00 AEST today through 14:30 AEST tomorrow, citing voltage support requirements. An inter-regional transfer limit variation is also active following a short-notice outage of the SYTS MLTS 2/SMTS 2 line affecting Victoria-SA interconnector flows. Traders should note the Tailem Bend to South East No. 2 275kV line outage has now been rescheduled to conclude by 12:00 AEST today, restoring normal transfer capacity into the SA region.