Today is Thursday 1st October 2026 which means that there are a number of milestones achieved today with respect to the NEM – including the following:

• of course, as flagged earlier, today is the day that the Project Energy Connect interconnector goes live;
• it’s also 5 years since the commencement of Five Minute Settlement;
• it’s the start of Q4 2026;
• and marks the commencement of ‘three hours free power’ in Victoria, as mandated by the ESC Victoria.
• and the commencement of the supercharging of the SRES (i.e. expanding eligibility to 1MW rooftop installations).

Our focus today will be on PEC Stage 2.

A reminder of the basics

For those:

• who’d like a refresher on the high level concepts;
• but who are not so inclined to delve into the gorier details of loop flows, TAP settings, and associated constraint equations etc …

… we wrote an article for you earlier in ‘The *basics* of how Project Energy Connect will appear in NEM Data’:

In the market data

In what follows, we might evolve this article to highlight some things as they progressively reveal themselves:

Prior to today …

We’ve already written a number of articles about Project Energy Connect (collated here).  Here are a couple in recent days flagging the progressive entry

A week ago, in ST PASA

Linton wrote last Thursday 24th September 2026 about ‘PEC Stage 2 enters the ST timeframe’.

Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon … in P30 Predispatch Data

We wrote yesterday about ‘PEC Stage 2 appearing in predispatch’.

Today

Already today we have seen some action:

Midnight, beginning Thursday 1st October 2026

This morning the interconnector was registered in AEMO’s Market Systems – as noted by AEMO in MN145435:

‘——————————————————————-
MARKET NOTICE
——————————————————————-

From :              AEMO
To   :              NEMITWEB1
Creation Date :     01/10/2026     00:00:28

——————————————————————-

Notice ID               :         145435
Notice Type ID          :         GENERAL NOTICE
Notice Type Description :         Subjects not covered in specific notices
Issue Date              :         01/10/2026
External Reference      :         NSW to SA (Project Energy Connect) Interconnector Registered – 01/10/2026

——————————————————————-

Reason :

AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE

The New South Wales to South Australia (Project Energy Connect) interconnector has been registered in AEMO’s market systems with effect from 00:00 hrs AEST on 1 October 2026. The ID of this interconnector is NSW1-SA1.

The capacity of this interconnector is +/- 150 MW. Currently the line 6F (Bundey to Buronga) is out of service – this is planned to return to service at 1200hrs 1 October. Refer to NOS for updates for this outage. When the line is returned to service the loop flow constraints will be active in the set L-PEC_X_6C_6G_6H.

For more information refer to the PEC project page on AEMO’s website:

Go live plan:

https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/initiatives/project-energyconnect/implementation-toolbox/pec-mi-final-industry-go-live-plan

PEC project webpage:

https://www.aemo.com.au/initiatives/major-programs/nem-reform-program/nem-reform-program-initiatives

Manager NEM Real Time Operations

——————————————————————-
END OF REPORT
——————————————————————-’

Here’s a snapshot of the ‘Interconnector Dashboard’ widget in ez2view, time travelled back to 00:05 (NEM time) … being the first Dispatch Interval in the calendar day after the interconnector has been registered:

Note the constraint equations:

1)  limiting both Export Limit and Import Limit to 0MW

2)  with (at this time) flows not expected until the half-hour period ending 12:30 in the P30 predispatch run … aligned with the planned return-to-service of line 6F (Bundey to Buronga), flagged in the Market Notice above.

Action pushed back 30 minutes (at ~11:50) …

Per the earlier P30 predispatch runs (such as noted above, notwithstanding Tripwire #1 (which itself has a 5-year anniversary today)) I’d been interpreting to suggest that we might see flows start from the 12:05 Dispatch Interval.

But, as captured in this ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget snapshot, we see that from ~11:50:40 (when P5 predispatch data was published for 11:55 and beyond) we see a 30-minute delay to ‘action happening’ was rolled through the AEMO data sets.

In this image, we see no flows until 12:35 (NEM time).

Metered Flows start, from 12:15 …

In this collage of 3 x ez2view widgets (including the ‘Interconnector Dashboard’ widget) at 12:35, we see both:

1)  That Export Limit (and hence Target Flow) remains at 0MW

2)  But that Metered Flow has started earlier … with the first non-zero flow captured at 12:15 (i.e. SCADA snapshot at the end of the 12:15 Dispatch Interval).

Target Flows start from 12:35

The first non-zero Export Limit and NSW1-SA1, and hence Target Flow, occurred for the 12:35 Dispatch Interval.

… but I’ve chosen to use this snapshot from NEMwatch v10.4* for the 12:40 Dispatch Interval to illustrate both:

* NEMwatch v10.4 was the upgrade released in July 2026 in preparation for PEC Stage 2.

1)  The flow west; and also

2)  A narrowing of the price gap between NSW and SA

Bringing NSW and SA prices together

Just over 2 hours later (at the 14:50 Dispatch Interval ) we clearly see the effect that PEC Stage 2 has had on bringing NSW and SA prices more closely* together – via this NEMwatch snapshot:

* remembering that ‘more closely together’ does not necessarily equate to ‘lower’ for one region in that particular dispatch interval … although the theory is that spot prices will be lower in the long run as a result:
(a)  notwithstanding the cost of transmission
(b)  and changing participant behaviours (short term and long term),
(c)  etc…

More to come?

… perhaps