Regional Outlook — QLD1: Thursday 3 September 2026
Queensland's spot price sits at $246.61/MWh as of 6:30am AEST, capping a sharp evening ramp from $127.86/MWh just an hour earlier. This is a significant departure from overnight conditions, where prices spent nearly nine hours in negative territory (as low as -$35/MWh between 2pm and 3pm AEST as rooftop and grid solar pushed supply well above demand). Demand has climbed from an overnight trough near 3,600 MW to 6,148 MW currently, and predispatch has the price easing back to $222/MWh for the 7am interval before collapsing to single digits and negative pricing again by 8am as solar generation ramps up.
Generation mix at 6:25am shows black coal dominant at 5,763.82 MW, with wind contributing 537.46 MW, battery storage at 581.29 MW, hydro at 257.7 MW, gas (OCGT) at 95.33 MW, and solar at just 24.02 MW given the pre-dawn timing. Renewable penetration sits at 19.29%, down from a peak above 46% around 10:30pm last night when wind and solar output was highest relative to demand. Carbon intensity is currently 0.7072 tCO2/MWh, tracking near the upper end of today's range — intensity has moved between roughly 0.47 and 0.75 tCO2/MWh over the past 24 hours, inversely tracking renewable output.
Predispatch forecasts show the current price spike easing quickly: $78.52/MWh by 7:30am, dropping to near-zero and negative by 10pm this evening, with troughs around -$8/MWh forecast through the early hours of tomorrow (12am-3am AEST) as demand falls and rooftop solar output history repeats. Midday trading tomorrow is forecast in the $70-84/MWh band before another evening lift toward $45/MWh by 6pm. Today's weather outlook supports this pattern — solar potential averages 37.3% with minimal cloud cover (7%) and top temperatures of 29.7°C, favouring strong rooftop and utility solar output through midday.
No QLD-specific market interventions are active. The most recent QLD notice is a non-conformance declaration for GUSF1 (37 MW deviation) from 28 August, now historical. Current active notices centre on SA voltage management interventions and TAS1 lightning-related contingency reclassifications on the Farrell-Reece and Gordon-Chapel St lines, none of which directly affect QLD dispatch. A planned AEMO MarketNet maintenance window today (10am-2pm AEST) may cause brief VPN connectivity interruptions for participants connected via the QLD datacentre termination point — traders should confirm failover to the NSW alternate is configured ahead of this window.