Victoria recorded sustained negative pricing

46 five-minute intervals, or 3.8 hours, settled below zero during the operating day.

Market

VIC1

Observed

18 April 2023

Triggered value

46 5-minute intervals

Severity

notable

Executive read

What changed

Measurement. Negative-price intervals reached 46 5-minute intervals against a 12 5-minute intervals reference.

Decision implication. Sustained negative prices expose the value of flexible load, storage and controllable generation while weakening unshifted merchant solar capture.

Evidence boundary. The event is a deterministic threshold or record comparison. It identifies a measurement that warrants investigation; it does not assign causality or quantify commercial exposure.

Operating context

Prior-window average

55 5-minute intervals

Event observation

46 5-minute intervals

Post-event average

31 5-minute intervals

Questions for the decision

What operating or market conditions coincided with this observation?
Was the value repeated, reversed or exceeded in the following days?
Which flexible resources, constraints or settlement exposures matter for the decision at hand?

Source trail

The measurement and context series are retained from the named primary operator or source release. Calculated shares and comparisons preserve the source boundary stated in the underlying Solar Analytica record.

https://nemweb.com.au/Data_Archive/Wholesale_Electricity/MMSDM/2023/MMSDM_2023_04/MMSDM_Historical_Data_SQLLoader/DATA/

Related precedents

2026-07-12New South Wales recorded sustained negative pricing56 5-minute intervals

2026-07-12Queensland recorded sustained negative pricing62 5-minute intervals

2026-07-12South Australia recorded sustained negative pricing265 5-minute intervals

2026-07-12Tasmania recorded sustained negative pricing162 5-minute intervals