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The open month of the release record: every entry dated this month, newest first, with the decision read it carries and the dated steps it leaves open. A month becomes a pinned edition when it closes and the desk writes one reading against it.
Open month · last entry 10 Oct 2026 · operating series to 10 Oct 2026
Market update
Market data
Grid
At midnight on 1 October AEMO registered the New South Wales to South Australia interconnector, Project EnergyConnect, as NSW1-SA1, with a capacity of 150 MW in either direction (market notice 145435). AEMO's notice had the Bundey to Buronga line out of service until a planned return at noon. The new link carried nothing for just over twelve hours, then carried power in all but two recorded intervals to the end of 8 October. Over those eight days the dispatch record shows 8.8 GWh moving into New South Wales and 4.8 GWh into South Australia. The direction followed the clock. From 2 to 8 October, 377 of the 504 intervals between 7 am and 1 pm flowed into South Australia, and 310 of the 333 between 6 pm and 10 pm flowed into New South Wales.
Decision read
These are AEMO's five-minute dispatch target flows in NEM time, not metered flow, and 8 of the 2,304 intervals are missing from the record. The link ran at 149 MW or more in either direction in 113 intervals, 62 of them on 6 and 7 October, so how often it meets its limit is the figure to watch while testing continues. Transgrid's project page still lists commissioning and inter-network testing as in progress, timed for mid to late 2026.
AEMO market notice 145435, 1 October 2026; AEMO NEMWeb dispatch interconnector results (MWFLOW), 1 to 8 October 2026
Market update
Solar economics
Markets
A Victorian Energy Policy Centre working paper by Bruce Mountain (September 2026) studies 5,096 households in four NEM states: 3,049,653 site-day observations over three years to August 2025, supplied by AGL Energy. It finds no evidence that households of any type respond to the size of the peak to off-peak price differential. Solar-plus-battery households on a time-of-use tariff used around 13 per cent less in peak windows than other households on the same tariff, at the sample mean. On flat tariffs, battery households were statistically indistinguishable from non-solar households.
Decision read
The measured effect follows tariff structure, not the size of the price gap, so a battery's peak reduction cannot be assumed independent of the tariff it sits on. The ownership comparison is cross-sectional, and the author records an unexplained association between time-of-use enrolment and peak use among non-solar households as a limitation. The temporal value model prices battery value by the hour under a stated tariff; this paper is observed household evidence on whether dispatch follows that tariff.
Victorian Energy Policy Centre, Storage and Signals, working paper, September 2026
Publication
Solar economics
Markets
From AEMO's half-hourly estimate of rooftop output and its five-minute prices, the value factor of NEM rooftop solar fell from between 0.78 and 0.98 in 2019 to between 0.02 and 0.31 in 2025, and has sat below the utility solar value factor in every region in every year since 2020. Victoria's rooftop value factor was below zero across 2023, at -0.10. In 2025, 66 per cent of South Australia's rooftop energy was produced in half hours with a negative wholesale price.
Decision read
Rooftop solar is the larger fleet, an estimated 28,862 GWh across the four mainland regions in 2025 against 18,133 GWh from solar farms, and it mostly keeps producing when prices go negative. The measurement-based estimate reproduces AEMO's published Q4 2025 distributed PV averages for NSW, Queensland and Victoria exactly. This is the wholesale value of the energy at the times it is produced, not what households are paid through feed-in tariffs and avoided retail prices.
AEMO MMSDM ROOFTOP_PV_ACTUAL and DISPATCHPRICE, January 2019 to December 2025, reconciled to AEMO Quarterly Energy Dynamics Q4 2025
Publication
SWIS reference
Grid
From CER small-scale solar records and ABS population for the same 246 statistical areas, rooftop solar in the SWIS screening boundary rose from 76 watts per resident at the end of 2011 to 1,045 watts at the end of 2025. Installation records peaked in 2011 and capacity added peaked in 2021, as the average system added grew from 2.2 kW to 8.8 kW.
Decision read
Reading another grid against this path needs figures on the same basis, and the cross-market capacity series the site holds cannot supply them: it mixes rooftop with utility-scale solar, converts AC and DC case by case, and does not document the population it divides by. A market can sit on this path once its figures are rooftop only, counted against a matched population, and paired with an operating record. Recent years will still rise while certificates can be created up to 12 months after installation.
Clean Energy Regulator postcode capacity records and ABS estimated resident population, via the SWIS DER snapshot, CER edition 2026-07
Publication
Solar economics
Markets
Computed from AEMO's five-minute dispatch prices and unit output, the value factor of NEM utility-scale solar, its output-weighted price over the time-weighted average, was between 0.78 and 1.06 across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria in 2019, and between 0.28 and 0.53 in 2025. The share of utility solar output generated at a negative regional price rose from under 5 per cent in every region to more than a third in every region, and to 49.5 per cent in Queensland.
Decision read
Over the same years utility solar output across the four regions rose from 5,115 GWh to 18,133 GWh, into the same daylight hours. The series reproduces AEMO's own published figures, $17/MWh for South Australian solar farms in Q4 2020 and 2,535 MW of average grid-scale solar output in Q4 2025, but it measures wholesale system value at each regional reference node, not project revenue, and observed output slightly flatters it because farms that curtail at negative prices drop out of the weighting.
AEMO MMSDM monthly archives, January 2019 to December 2025, reconciled to AEMO Quarterly Energy Dynamics Q4 2020 and Q4 2025
5 entries in October 2026. The month is open, so this page changes as releases enter the record.
The same window on three grids, observed daily and read from the operations tables rather than the event ledger. Reference lines are the detector’s own thresholds. A run that began before the first of the month is shown from the first, so a reading here is a month and never a record.
Days in October 2026 when South Australia ran five-minute intervals below zero. The detector writes an event from 12 intervals, one hour.
AEMO NEMWeb, via the daily operations record
Renewables and nuclear as a share of positive reported generation and imports, daily through October 2026.
Elexon daily reported generation mix
The daily minimum of operational demand on the SWIS through October 2026. No record value for this measure is held in the record, so none is drawn.
AEMO WEM operational demand
The month’s entries and the steps they left open, sent once when the edition is pinned. No account, no saved filter, and nothing sent while the month is still open.