Regional Outlook — QLD1: Tuesday 11 August 2026
Queensland's spot price sits at $190.99/MWh as at 06:30 AEST, up sharply from the $70-90/MWh band that held through most of yesterday afternoon and evening. The region swung through negative territory overnight (troughs near -$11/MWh between 10:00pm-6:00am AEST) before climbing steadily from the 6:00am ramp, breaking $100/MWh by 9:35am and spiking to $291/MWh briefly at 10:25am on tight conditions. Total demand has climbed to 6,853 MW, tracking above the low-4,000 MW overnight trough but still shy of yesterday's evening peak near 7,700 MW.
Generation mix at the current interval is dominated by black coal at 5,917 MW, with gas OCGT contributing 118 MW, hydro at 247 MW, batteries discharging 329 MW, wind at 134 MW, and solar negligible at 0.4 MW given the pre-dawn timing. Renewable penetration sits at just 10.5%, well down from the 40-49% levels recorded overnight when wind and hydro carried a larger share of load. Carbon intensity has risen accordingly to 0.7833 tCO2/MWh, up from the 0.44-0.52 tCO2/MWh range overnight, tracking the inverse relationship between coal's rising output share and falling renewable contribution as solar has yet to ramp.
Predispatch forecasts show prices easing back through the morning, with 21:00 AEST forecast at $107.73/MWh, dropping to $85.74/MWh by 22:00 and $40/MWh by 23:00, before falling into negative territory overnight — troughs near -$5/MWh between 04:00-05:00 AEST tomorrow. Prices then rebound with the morning ramp to $93/MWh by 08:00-11:00, before easing back to the $55-63/MWh range through tomorrow afternoon. Weather outlook shows mild conditions (10-22°C) with moderate cloud cover (56%) today, limiting solar potential to around 15%, which supports continued coal reliance during daylight hours.
On notices, an active Reserve Notice from AEMO's MT PASA flags forecast low reserve conditions for South Australia in July 2028 — not directly QLD-specific but relevant for interconnector flow planning. A QLD-specific inter-regional transfer notice from 8 August remains active regarding an unplanned outage of the Tarong 88712 275kV circuit breaker, which invoked constraint set Q-HATR affecting the NSW1-QLD1 interconnector equations. Two non-conformance notices for units MPP_1 and STAN-1 in QLD from 6-7 August remain on record but are historical and not expected to affect today's dispatch.