Regional Outlook — NSW1: Monday 31 August 2026
NSW spot price sits at $76.77/MWh as of 6:30am AEST, tracking within the moderate morning demand ramp after overnight prices collapsed to negative territory ($0-3/MWh range) between 10am and 3pm AEST yesterday under minimum system load conditions. Demand currently reads 8,385 MW, up from an overnight trough of 4,676 MW around 12:45pm AEST. Prices spiked as high as $136.73/MWh yesterday during the 5:30pm AEST evening peak as demand climbed past 8,700 MW, illustrating the typical daily volatility pattern between low-demand midday troughs and morning/evening peaks.
Generation mix is currently dominated by black coal at 4,993 MW, supplying the bulk of NSW load. Wind contributes 477 MW, hydro 324 MW, battery output 50 MW, solar 100 MW (pre-dawn, still ramping), and gas OCGT a modest 45 MW, with gas CCGT offline. Renewable penetration sits at 15.87%, well down from the overnight peak of 56.79% recorded around 3am AEST when wind and hydro carried a much larger share against low demand. Carbon intensity has correspondingly risen to 0.7386 tCO2/MWh, up from an overnight low of 0.3794 tCO2/MWh, reflecting coal's larger share of the mix as solar has not yet ramped and wind output has eased.
Predispatch forecasts show prices easing through the morning to $31.46/MWh by 8am AEST, then diving negative into the -$3/MWh range from 9am through until 3pm AEST as rooftop and grid solar build — consistent with the minimum system load pattern seen yesterday. Prices are forecast to climb sharply from 5pm AEST, reaching $93.77/MWh by 6pm and holding in the $83-95/MWh band through the evening peak to 9pm AEST. Traders should note the steep afternoon-to-evening swing typical of high-solar, low-wind conditions today, with wind potential forecast at just 1.8% average and solar potential at 31% for the day.
No active market notices directly constrain NSW generation or transmission today. Two upcoming AEMO system outages are scheduled for 3 September — a MSATS FTA Release 2 change (1-4pm AEST outage) and MarketNet VPN security patching (10am-2pm AEST) — neither expected to affect real-time dispatch. The Bayswater-Wollar 500kV line outage cleared on 27 August with no residual constraint sets active. SA remains the focus of ongoing minimum system load and voltage intervention activity, with no spillover impact on NSW dispatch conditions currently identified.