Regional Outlook — VIC1: Thursday 20 August 2026
Victoria's spot price sits at $55.52/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with demand at 6,366 MW and climbing into the morning ramp. This follows an extremely volatile evening period: prices spiked to $406.01/MWh at 09:10 AEST last night before crashing to negative territory (-$0.05/MWh forecast) and sub-$15/MWh troughs overnight as wind generation firmed up and demand eased. The current price sits well below yesterday's evening peak but above the overnight low band, reflecting the transition into today's morning demand ramp.
Generation mix at the current interval shows brown coal dominating at 4,443 MW, followed by wind at 1,942 MW, battery discharge at 175 MW, gas OCGT at 107 MW, and hydro at 40 MW. Solar is at zero, consistent with pre-dawn conditions. Renewable penetration sits at 32.15%, down from a peak of 42.96% recorded around 03:30 AEST overnight when wind output and lower demand combined to lift the renewable share. Carbon intensity has risen accordingly to 0.8187 tCO2/MWh, up from an overnight low of 0.6959 tCO2/MWh, tracking the inverse relationship with wind contribution as brown coal fills the generation gap.
Predispatch forecasts show prices climbing through the morning peak, reaching $76.62/MWh by 08:00 AEST and topping out near $81.33/MWh around 09:30 AEST as demand builds. Prices then ease through the middle of the day, falling to the $50-70/MWh band by midday before dropping sharply into negative territory during the afternoon solar window — forecasts show $-0.05/MWh across several intervals between 16:00 and 18:00 AEST, consistent with typical rooftop and grid-scale solar suppression of daytime prices. Overnight troughs are expected to return to the $10-13/MWh range. Wind potential today is forecast low at 1.5 (index), with solar potential also subdued at 2.9 under 71% average cloud cover, suggesting renewable output may be more constrained than yesterday.
On notices, VIC-specific items include a short-notice outage of the Hazelwood PS 4-6 bus tie 220kV line (constraint V-NIL_HW_TIE invoked from 11:00 AEST yesterday, affecting VIC1-NSW1 and VIC-SA interconnector flows) and a now-cancelled lightning-related reclassification of the Eildon PS to Mt Beauty 220kV lines as credible contingencies. A negative settlement residue constraint on the VIC-SA interconnector (NRM_VIC1_SA1) was active for part of yesterday before AEMO ceased action at 18:00 AEST. No active market interventions or non-conformance declarations are currently affecting VIC1 today. Traders should watch the Hazelwood tie constraint given its potential to affect interconnector capacity and price separation with NSW during today's morning and evening peaks.