Regional Outlook — VIC1: Friday 21 August 2026
Victoria's spot price sits at $12.50/MWh at 06:25 AEST, deep in the overnight trough after 24 hours that ranged from a peak of $78.54/MWh (17:00 AEST yesterday) down to negative territory (-$0.05/MWh at 00:00 AEST). Demand at 5,054 MW is running well below yesterday's evening peak of 7,376 MW, consistent with the typical Saturday early-morning demand profile. Prices have been sub-$15/MWh for most of the past six hours, with several intervals at $1.43/MWh or lower and one settlement briefly negative — a pattern driven by soft demand overnight combined with strong wind output.
The generation mix at 06:30 AEST is running on brown coal (3,316 MW), wind (3,048 MW), battery discharge (108 MW), hydro (34 MW), with negligible gas (0.4 MW OCGT, 0 MW CCGT) and no solar output pre-dawn. Wind is contributing close to parity with brown coal in absolute terms, underpinning the renewable penetration reading of 49.0% and a carbon intensity of 0.622 tCO2/MWh — a notable improvement on the 0.84 tCO2/MWh readings seen at this time yesterday, tracking the overnight carbon intensity trend which has been declining steadily since the 06:00 AEST period.
Predispatch forecasts point to a sharp reversal through the day. Prices are expected to stay low through the early morning (forecast $6-10/MWh out to 03:00 AEST tomorrow), before climbing into the afternoon peak: $98/MWh by 07:30 AEST, breaking $120/MWh by 08:30 AEST, and spiking to a forecast $257-281/MWh across the 12:00-13:00 AEST window — the sharpest move in the profile. Prices are forecast to ease back to the $94-127/MWh range by late afternoon (16:00-18:00 AEST). Weather data shows today's solar potential is weak (1.8 average, 82% cloud cover), which likely explains the pronounced midday price spike as thin solar generation fails to offset rising demand. Traders should note the identified low-price windows overnight (01:00-05:00 AEST) offer load-shifting value of $270-277/MWh versus the afternoon peak.
On notices, Victoria itself has no active credible contingency events currently in force — the Eildon PS-Mt Beauty lightning reclassification from 19 August has been cancelled. However, traders should watch Tasmania, where AEMO has reclassified the Tungatinah-Lake Echo-Waddamana and Tungatinah-Waddamana 110kV lines as credible contingency events due to lightning (effective 05:23 AEST today, until further notice), which may affect Basslink flows and Victorian import/export dynamics given the existing Basslink technical limitation constraint (I-VT_000) still in place from 18 August.