SA Electricity Spot Price Today

How South Australia's price behaves

South Australia has the highest share of wind and solar in the NEM and no coal generation. On a sunny spring day, rooftop solar can supply most of the state's own demand, and the demand the grid has to meet can fall close to zero. Wind adds to that overnight. The result is the most negative-price hours of any region, often for most of the daylight hours.

South Australia is also the region most prone to price spikes. When the wind drops on a hot evening, gas generation and batteries set the price, and a small region with limited import capacity can see prices jump to thousands of dollars per megawatt-hour within a few intervals. That volatility is why South Australia was the first home of grid-scale batteries in Australia, and why storage there earns from both arbitrage and frequency control.

Interconnectors

South Australia connects to Victoria through the Heywood interconnector and the Murraylink HVDC link. Project EnergyConnect adds a new link to New South Wales. When the interconnectors are full, South Australia's price separates from the rest of the NEM, which is when the deepest negative prices and the sharpest spikes happen.

What it means for projects

Frequent negative prices cut the revenue a solar or wind farm earns unless it can curtail or store energy, and they raise the value of batteries that charge when prices are below zero. Our utility-scale design services include the hybrid and storage configurations that respond to this pattern.