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.

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:

Earlier …

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.

Later in the day …

More to come