The week of 26 April to 3 May 2026 delivered a tale of two halves across the National Electricity Market. The first half of the week saw broadly firm prices, with most mainland regions tracking in the $50–$100/MWh range and the Western Australia wholesale market (WA1) printing some notably elevated averages. By the back end of the week, however, conditions softened considerably — Victoria and South Australia in particular moved into sustained negative and near-zero average pricing territory as renewable output weighed heavily on midday and off-peak intervals.
Tasmania was the standout story in terms of operational milestones, recording 100% renewable penetration on every single day of the review period — from 27 April through to 3 May. These events were driven by the state's predominantly hydro-based fleet, supplemented by wind, with gas OCGT capacity remaining offline across those intervals. While routine for Tasmania, the consistency of this outcome across a full week is worth noting. A major binding constraint event on 27 April — the T_BLINK_TV_NGZ constraint registering a shadow price of $7.3 million — attracted attention, though spot prices in TAS1 remained relatively contained at $88–$90/MWh, suggesting the constraint was an internal network issue rather than a direct regional price driver.
Gas hub prices told a story of easing supply tightness as the week progressed. East coast hubs opened the period in the $10.50–$11.20/GJ range before softening materially by the weekend, with STTM Sydney dropping to $7.69/GJ by 3 May. In WEM, WA1 averaged above $100/MWh for six of the seven days covered, with a sharp spike to $976/MWh peak on 28 April standing out as the week's most extreme price event across both markets.
Across the NEM, the week's price landscape was defined by a clear softening trend from mid-week onward. Key regional observations:
WA1 was the most consistently elevated market of the week. Daily averages ranged from $91/MWh on 26 April to a weekly high average of $186/MWh on 28 April. The 28 April daily maximum of $976/MWh was the single largest price spike observed across both NEM and WEM during the review period and warrants close attention from WEM market participants. WA1 averages softened through the back end of the week — $122/MWh on 30 April, $107/MWh on 1 May, and $103/MWh on 2 May — but remained well above most NEM mainland averages throughout.
Tasmania's renewable performance was the headline story this week. TAS1 recorded 100% renewable penetration on seven consecutive days — 27 April through 3 May — with each event driven by hydro as the dominant source and wind providing a meaningful supplementary contribution. Hydro output ranged widely across these events, from approximately 186 MW to over 1,255 MW depending
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