Interconnector Watch: Saturday 15 August 2026

Interconnector flows this morning show Victoria firmly in export mode, with VIC1-NSW1 carrying 599.7 MW north (70% of its 853.6 MW export limit) and Heywood (V-SA) exporting a modest 16.4 MW into South Australia. Basslink (T-V-MNSP1) is flowing 169.6 MW from Tasmania into Victoria, sitting right at its 169.6 MW import limit into Victoria — effectively fully utilised, though not formally flagged as binding in this snapshot. Murraylink (V-S-MNSP1) adds a further 18 MW from Victoria to SA. None of the six interconnectors are currently marked as binding, indicating the network has headroom against formal transfer limits despite Basslink running at its ceiling.

QNI (NSW1-QLD1) is exporting 825.9 MW from NSW into Queensland, around 73% of its 1134.8 MW import limit on that side, while Directlink (N-Q-MNSP1) is moving a smaller 33 MW in the same direction. This NSW-to-Queensland flow is consistent with the price spread: NSW sits at $79.40/MWh, the highest of the mainland regions, against Queensland at $68.82/MWh. Victoria's export to NSW similarly aligns with price — VIC at $70.43/MWh is trading at a discount to NSW, and flow is moving toward the higher-priced region as expected. SA at $69.51/MWh and Tasmania at $67.23/MWh remain the two lowest-priced regions, with net inflows from Victoria and outflows to Victoria respectively holding those spreads in a tight $12/MWh band across the NEM.

Several standing constraint sets remain active and warrant attention even though no interconnector is binding right now. The Lismore 132 kV line outage (constraint set N-LSLS_9U8, invoked 1050 hrs 15 August) affects Directlink transfer capability, compounding an existing control-availability issue on Directlink itself (I-CTRL_ISSUE_TE, active since 0615 hrs 14 August) that has fixed its dispatch rather than allowing normal control response. Murraylink faces an equivalent control-unavailability constraint (I-CTRL_ISSUE_ML, active since 0610 hrs 14 August). On the NSW-Queensland corridor, three additional constraint sets remain live: the Bayswater-Sydney West 330 kV line outage (N-BWSW_32, since 10 August), the Tarong 275 kV circuit breaker outage (Q-HATR, since 8 August), and an automated Sydney security constraint (CA_SYDS_59839EB2, since 4 August) — all with QNI and/or Directlink on the left-hand side. These stacked constraints reduce effective transfer capability on the northern interconnectors even though today's flows sit comfortably within the published limits.

Losses are not reported in this dataset (null across all records), so reported flows should be read as gross MW rather than net-of-loss figures when reconciling against regional demand and generation balances.