Interconnector Watch: Saturday 5 September 2026
Three of the six NEM interconnectors are binding at 6:30pm AEST, with the Heywood-Murraylink corridor into South Australia showing the tightest conditions. Heywood (V-SA) is exporting 565 MW from Victoria into SA, sitting at its export limit, while Murraylink (V-S-MNSP1) is also binding at -100.88 MW, mirroring its import limit exactly — both interconnectors are fully utilised in the VIC-to-SA direction. Despite this maximum southward flow, SA's price of $60.09/MWh sits above VIC's $35.87/MWh, indicating SA demand (1,132 MW) is drawing on all available imported capacity and local generation is still setting a higher marginal price than the exporting region.
Basslink (T-V-MNSP1) is binding as well, flowing 348 MW from Tasmania into Victoria against its import limit, near the top of its operating envelope. This flow direction is consistent with TAS1's $52.86/MWh sitting above VIC1's $35.87/MWh — Tasmanian generation is moving north to capture the price differential, and the interconnector's binding status confirms it's constrained rather than freely arbitraging the full spread.
VIC1-NSW1 and the Queensland interconnectors are not binding today. VIC1-NSW1 is flowing 214 MW from Victoria into NSW, well inside its 295.7 MW import / 214.47 MW export envelope, though it's sitting right at its export limit value, suggesting only a modest export capacity ceiling is nearby rather than a hard bind. QNI (NSW1-QLD1) shows a modest 244 MW flow from QLD into NSW, comfortably within its wide -1,124.8/725.4 MW range, while Directlink (N-Q-MNSP1) is barely active at -9 MW. NSW ($75.41/MWh) and QLD ($72.50/MWh) are both trading well above VIC, but the lack of binding constraints on this path means the spread reflects regional supply-demand balance rather than transfer capacity limits — NSW demand is highest in the mainland NEM at 6,263 MW.
On constraint notices, the active market notices are largely historical and administrative rather than currently price-shaping: Tasmanian lightning-related contingency reclassifications (Farrell-Reece, Tungatinah-Waddamana, Gordon-Chapel St lines) have all been cancelled as of yesterday, and the Yallourn-Rowville 220kV reclassification in VIC1 was also cancelled at 19:04 AEST last night. Two items remain operationally relevant: the unplanned outage of the Keith-Kincraig 132kV line in SA (constraint set S-KHKN, invoking V-SA) from 04 September, and the Sydney West-Vineyard 330kV line outage in NSW (constraint set N-SWVY_29, invoking QNI, VIC-NSW and Directlink) from the same day — both plausibly contributing to the binding status on Heywood and the moderate utilisation seen on the NSW-connected interconnectors today.