The forward curve has been longing for justification to maintain its price level, then the threat of the extreme prices during July appeared on the radar. However, the predicted volatility faded and prices collapsed, and furthermore the financial market never believed it was going to happen.
Through the last full week of July 2026, predispatch was calling near the Maximum Price Cap ($23,200/MWh) for NSW, SA and VIC on five separate trading days the day prior. However, once the day arrived the extreme price forecast faded with the maximum half hour prices on 29 July reaching just short of the magical $300/MWh.
This report reconstructs the week, tests it against the history since 1 July last year using the day-ahead and same-day forecasts. We check the results against how the actual spot market outcome and the response from the financial market. Given we have used the AEMO 30-minute predispatch data, all actual spot prices results presented in this article align with the same resolution.
Executive Summary
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A full week of Maximum Price Cap level warnings fade to a quiet trading day: The day-ahead predispatch flagged NSW, SA and/or VIC would approach the Maximum Price Cap on 21st, 24th, 26th, 28th and 29 July, with SA and NSW the most persistent. The largest spike occurred on 29 July when the actual spot prices reached a maximum of $299.60/MWh (SA) and under $130/MWh everywhere else.
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The financial market barely reacted: The Q3-26 quarterly base futures price moved by only a few dollars across the entire episode — NSW's quarterly price began at $88.50/MWh on 1 July and then was around $75–77/MWh through the scare, and illiquid South Australia along with Queensland drifted lower, not higher, during the week the predispatch signal was loudest. Victoria was deaf to the price signal and hardly moved. The trading market were non-believers and remained unconvinced of the veracity of the warnings; and as history shows, were correct.
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July 2026 was a genuinely calm month by recent standards: NSW and QLD recorded their lowest July average spot price in at least six years; SA, TAS and VIC recorded their second- or third-lowest. Against the full 25-year NEM history — spanning eras of structurally different pricing — July 2026 sits closer to the middle of the range, since prices across the whole market were simply lower in the 2000's and early 2010's.
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This is a recurring pattern, not a one-off: Since 1 July 2025, the day-ahead predispatch cycle alone has forecast a price near Maximum Price Cap level (≥$19,000/MWh) on 472 separate region-days across the NEM. Some 388 of those (82.2%) collapsed to an actual outcome below $300/MWh, and just 21 (4.4%) went on to clear at least $1,000/MWh. Very few signals survived from the day prior dispatch regime into the same day 7:00am predispatch forecast. Only 9 region-days appeared in the 7am same-day run , but the ones that do are far more likely to be genuine.
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Why it fades, and why it's getting harder to call: generators face less scrutiny offering more capacity in lower price bands, so day-ahead extremes will always tend to soften. Demand-side response outside AEMO's formal Wholesale Demand Response program adds further unpredictability — and a growing fleet of home batteries and Vehicle-to-Grid enabled electric vehicles will make calling genuine extreme-price events progressively harder over time.
1.0 The Late July 2026 Episode
AEMO's 7am predispatch forecast run is at 30-minute resolution and extends to the end of the old 'trading day' definition of 4:00am the following day (D+1); while the 1:00pm forecast run rolls forward a further trading day, extending to 4:00am on D+2.
This report and its underlying dataset track uses these two daily snapshots, which are progressively narrowed and updated as each trading day approaches and unfolds. The week of 21–29 July 2026 saw one of the loudest and most sustained Maximum Price Cap level signals since 1 July last year, spread across three regions.
1.1 How the Signal Evolved Through the Week
The table below tracks the day-ahead forecast for NSW, SA and VIC against the actual maximum price recorded anywhere in the NEM that day, for every day from 21 to 30 July 2026. Bold red day-ahead figures are at or above $19,000/MWh.
| Date | NSW day-ahead | SA day-ahead | VIC day-ahead | Maximum Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21-Jul | $23,200 | $23,200 | $23,200 | $165 |
| 22-Jul | $597 | $668 | $593 | $125 |
| 23-Jul | $1,245 | $1,748 | $1,290 | $100 |
| 24-Jul | $6,020 | $20,262 | $6,327 | $124 |
| 25-Jul | $312 | $398 | $277 | $105 |
| 26-Jul | $23,089 | $22,628 | $20,713 | $153 |
| 27-Jul | $9,295 | $2,715 | $951 | $212 |
| 28-Jul | $23,089 | $2,797 | $9,129 | $127 |
| 29-Jul | $21,059 | $23,200 | $19,650 | $300 |
| 30-Jul | $23,200 | $23,200 | $23,200 | $561 |
Maximum Price Cap level day-ahead forecasts appeared on five of the ten days shown, with SA and NSW carrying the signal most often and QLD and TAS joining intermittently (not shown above, but flagged on 21, 26 and 28 July). Every one of these day-ahead calls collapsed to an actual outcome under $300/MWh including 29 July itself, where SA's day-ahead forecast of $23,200/MWh settled to a maximum of just $299/MWh. The only day in the run with a genuinely elevated actual price was 30 July, and even that reached a modest maximum of $561/MWh, nowhere near the Maximum Price Cap level warnings that had been running all week.
1.2 What Happened on 29 July
Actual half-hourly prices through the afternoon and evening of 29 July are shown below for all five regions. SA was the region carrying the loudest day-ahead signal and had a modest genuine price lift to $299.60/MWh at 17:30, but nothing close to the $23,200/MWh forecast a day earlier. NSW, QLD, TAS and VIC all settled at ordinary levels throughout.
| Time (AEST) | NSW | QLD | SA | TAS | VIC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15:30 | $56.43 | $49.99 | $52.00 | $49.09 | $54.29 |
| 16:00 | $76.61 | $71.69 | $88.57 | $55.47 | $75.60 |
| 16:30 | $110.78 | $101.10 | $111.59 | $81.54 | $107.94 |
| 17:00 | $124.42 | $111.66 | $151.77 | $93.56 | $121.14 |
| 17:30 | $127.25 | $114.60 | $299.61 | $112.16 | $124.60 |
| 18:00 | $123.73 | $111.44 | $165.62 | $104.83 | $122.88 |
| 18:30 | $128.57 | $110.39 | $177.56 | $114.24 | $128.19 |
| 19:00 | $122.51 | $107.00 | $186.61 | $105.72 | $117.64 |
| 19:30 | $119.48 | $105.55 | $189.66 | $100.84 | $112.87 |
| 20:00 | $126.81 | $106.54 | $170.24 | $106.06 | $118.40 |
| 20:30 | $126.92 | $109.09 | $189.66 | $95.47 | $116.73 |
| 21:00 | $126.33 | $109.95 | $164.07 | $104.07 | $116.23 |
| 21:30 | $113.68 | $98.89 | $200.08 | $94.86 | $105.65 |
| 22:00 | $97.59 | $86.42 | $218.41 | $80.06 | $89.56 |
| 22:30 | $96.35 | $83.11 | $171.98 | $80.03 | $89.09 |
| 23:00 | $97.57 | $83.76 | $183.72 | $66.30 | $90.04 |
1.3 Market and Historical Context
Did the futures market react?
When extreme prices near the Maximum Price Cap appears on the radar, it tests the forward market. If the market believes it is likely to occur, then the market price for the current quarter will lift. Conversely, if the market believes the volatility will disappear, then no change will eventuate.
The table below tracks the Q3-26 base futures price at key points through July, alongside the quarter-to-date average spot price for comparison. The bold row marks the 29 July.
| Date | NSW Base | NSW Spot | QLD Base | QLD Spot | SA Base | SA Spot | VIC Base | VIC Spot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01-Jul | $88.50 | $92.40 | $70.75 | $80.55 | $88.00 | $31.06 | $65.63 | $16.13 |
| 20-Jul | $75.25 | $80.40 | $63.70 | $64.91 | $81.00 | $83.18 | $57.70 | $76.32 |
| 22-Jul | $75.50 | $81.04 | $64.00 | $65.81 | $77.50 | $83.33 | $58.50 | $75.34 |
| 27-Jul | $75.75 | $79.39 | $63.29 | $64.48 | $79.00 | $81.10 | $58.00 | $68.72 |
| 28-Jul | $77.25 | $79.05 | $62.98 | $64.61 | $79.00 | $78.10 | $58.59 | $66.51 |
| 29-Jul | $77.25 | $78.58 | $62.50 | $64.34 | $79.00 | $78.59 | $58.26 | $65.50 |
| 31-Jul | $73.75 | $81.52 | $61.25 | $65.43 | $78.50 | $95.87 | $54.65 | $70.33 |
NSW's quarterly futures price actually fell from $88.50/MWh on 1 July to around $75/MWh through most of the month, ticking up only to $77.25/MWh either side of 28–29 July — a two-dollar move, not a reaction to a Maximum Price Cap level warning. South Australia's futures price fell from $81/MWh to $77.50/MWh over exactly the days its predispatch signal was loudest (20–22 July), the opposite of what a genuine belief in an extreme outcome would produce. QLD and VIC drifted gently lower across the whole period regardless of what predispatch was signalling. Across all four regions, the futures market's revealed view was that nothing unusual was going to happen, consistent with how the trading day actually unfolded.
Here is a chart of the base futures prices during the month and the quarter-to-date average price for each Region.
How does July 2026 compare with history?
The quiet trading day on 29 July sits inside a broader pattern: July 2026 was a calm month by the standards of the past several years. NSW and QLD recorded their lowest July average spot price in at least six years; SA, TAS and VIC recorded their second- or third-lowest. Measured against the full 25-year NEM history, the picture is more moderate — prices across the whole market were structurally much lower in the 2000s and early 2010s, so July 2026 sits about the median since 2017.
| Region | July 2026 | Rank, last 6 years | 25-yr average | 25-yr range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NSW | $81.52 | 1 of 6 (lowest=1) | $72.25 | $24–$371 |
| QLD | $65.43 | 1 of 6 (lowest=1) | $69.46 | $19–$392 |
| SA | $95.87 | 3 of 6 (lowest=1) | $89.97 | $27–$372 |
| TAS | $71.02 | 3 of 6 (lowest=1) | $76.27 | $23–$323 |
| VIC | $70.33 | 2 of 6 (lowest=1) | $69.80 | $26–$340 |
July average spot price by region: 2026 result, rank within the last six years, and 25-year historical average and range. The chart below shows the complete history of July average spot prices since 2001.
Put together, the futures market's lack of reaction and the historically calm month both point the same way: the underlying conditions in late July 2026 did not support the kind of outcome predispatch was pricing in, and the market — as reflected in where capital was actually positioned rather than where the forecast pointed — was consistent with how the trading day actually unfolded.
1.4 Confirming Evidence From Other Events
The same pattern — and its rarer opposite — shows up elsewhere in the 13-month dataset. Two contrasting cases illustrate both sides.
22 June 2026: a NEM-wide day-ahead call, one region delivers
On 21 June, every region carried a day-ahead forecast near Maximum Price Cap level for the following day, shown below.
| Run | NSW | QLD | VIC | SA | TAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21-Jun 7am (D-1) | $20,300 | $14,104 | $20,300 | $20,300 | $20,300 |
| 21-Jun 1pm (D-1) | $20,300 | $19,907 | $20,101 | $20,300 | $19,203 |
| 22-Jun 7am (Day D) | $600 | $164 | $644 | $20,300 | $550 |
| 22-Jun 1pm (Day D) | $884 | $164 | $943 | $1,001 | $829 |
By the same-day 7am run on 22 June itself, only SA remained at Maximum Price Cap level — NSW, QLD, TAS and VIC had all dropped to ordinary levels. SA then settled genuinely at the $20,300/MWh Maximum Price Cap at 07:30 that morning: the one region where the same-day update confirmed rather than dissolved the earlier signal, and a reminder that the same-day predispatch update is where the real filtering happens.
The 11–20 December 2025: when the signal stuck
NSW carried day-ahead forecasts at Maximum Price Cap level on five separate days in this window. On three of them the signal dissolved by the same-day update and produced nothing. On 18 and 19 December, both the 7am and 1pm same-day runs held at $20,300/MWh on both days, and NSW genuinely spiked to $4,959/MWh and $5,773/MWh respectively.
| Date | Day-ahead fcst | Same-day 7am fcst | Same-day 1pm fcst | Actual maximum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11-Dec | $99 | $91 | $85 | $95 |
| 12-Dec | $19,351 | $160 | $159 | $125 |
| 13-Dec | $610 | $151 | $158 | $228 |
| 14-Dec | $338 | $220 | $152 | $120 |
| 15-Dec | $226 | $130 | $109 | $119 |
| 16-Dec | $106 | $136 | $138 | $99 |
| 17-Dec | $20,300 | $374 | $307 | $234 |
| 18-Dec | $20,300 | $20,300 | $20,300 | $4,959 |
| 19-Dec | $20,300 | $20,300 | $20,300 | $5,773 |
| 20-Dec | $20,300 | $576 | $196 | $210 |
Selected NSW half-hourly actual spot prices, 18–19 December 2025, alongside neighbouring regions.
| Interval | NSW | QLD | SA | TAS | VIC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18-Dec 17:00 | $62.69 | $59.78 | $191.09 | $104.63 | $179.41 |
| 18-Dec 17:30 | $161.89 | $128.13 | $223.56 | $135.46 | $214.52 |
| 18-Dec 18:00 | $4,958.66 | $141.90 | $254.03 | $144.93 | $239.53 |
| 18-Dec 18:30 | $3,518.91 | $144.27 | $316.89 | $190.18 | $297.03 |
| 18-Dec 19:00 | $1,748.69 | $138.31 | $293.60 | $157.40 | $261.63 |
| 18-Dec 19:30 | $197.25 | $126.10 | $228.82 | $112.49 | $194.64 |
| 19-Dec 10:30 | $305.33 | $-9.65 | $-7.00 | $92.17 | $104.86 |
| 19-Dec 11:00 | $329.15 | $-11.93 | $-12.11 | $140.12 | $200.08 |
| 19-Dec 11:30 | $29.77 | $-10.24 | $-27.89 | $86.98 | $150.67 |
| 19-Dec 12:00 | $2,467.58 | $-9.28 | $-8.13 | $79.42 | $151.81 |
| 19-Dec 12:30 | $56.27 | $-8.67 | $-15.91 | $38.46 | $65.49 |
| 19-Dec 13:00 | $145.76 | $-6.94 | $-6.38 | $86.20 | $131.31 |
| 19-Dec 13:30 | $5,772.90 | $-6.38 | $-9.02 | $84.18 | $97.48 |
| 19-Dec 14:00 | $829.29 | $-6.11 | $8.67 | $79.28 | $104.08 |
| 19-Dec 14:30 | $244.73 | $-8.62 | $2.31 | $84.29 | $92.32 |
| 19-Dec 15:00 | $69.80 | $-9.51 | $-7.90 | $84.18 | $95.60 |
Together, these two cases show what separates a genuine event from a false alarm within this dataset: persistence into the same-day update, and in the December case, a signal that survived in only one region while others (where shown) stayed quiet. The 29 July episode had neither: the signal faded by the day-ahead cycle's final run and vanished entirely by the same-day update, and neither the futures market nor the historical record gave any reason to expect otherwise.
2.0 A Year of Predispatch Signals
To test how general this pattern is, every trading day between 1 July 2025 and 31 July 2026 was checked at three points: the day-ahead cycle (the 7am and 1pm runs made on the prior calendar day), and the same-day cycle (the 7am and 1pm runs made on the trading day itself). A region-day is "flagged" at a given horizon if the relevant run forecast $19,000/MWh or more at any point in that trading day. The applicable Maximum Price Cap was $20,300/MWh up until 1 July 2026, and then $23,200/MWh thereafter.
2.1 Reliability by Predispatch Horizon
The result is a sharp step-change, not a gradual improvement. The day-ahead cycle alone produced 472 region-days with a forecast near Maximum Price Cap level over the 13-month period, of which 82.2% collapsed to an actual outcome below $300/MWh.
Very few of those signals are still live by the time the trading day's own predispatch cycle runs — only 9 region-days for the 7:00am same-day run and 8 for the 1:00pm same-day run — but of the ones that do survive, the collapse rate falls to a third of the day-ahead level, and the genuine (≥$1,000/MWh) hit rate rises above 55%.
| Predispatch horizon | Instances | Collapsed (<$300) | Genuine (≥$1,000) | Collapse % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-1 (day-ahead) | 472 | 388 | 21 (4%) | 82% |
| Day-D 7am run | 9 | 3 | 5 (56%) | 33% |
| Day-D 1pm run | 8 | 3 | 5 (63%) | 38% |
In practice, this means the great majority of day-ahead Maximum Price Cap level scares are self-resolving: of the roughly 36 region-days flagged day-ahead each month, on average fewer than one survives into the trading day's own predispatch cycle. When one does survive, it is a materially different and far more credible signal than the original day-ahead forecast.
2.2 The Day-Ahead Base Rate, by Region
Looking at the day-ahead cycle alone by region: 388 of 472 flagged region-days (82.2%) collapsed to an actual outcome below $300/MWh, and only 21 (4.4%) went on to clear $1,000/MWh.
| Region | Day-ahead flagged ≥$19,000 | Collapsed (actual <$300) | Genuine (actual ≥$1,000) | Median actual outcome | Collapse rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NSW | 160 | 131 | 8 | $199 | 82% |
| QLD | 36 | 32 | 0 | $215 | 89% |
| VIC | 99 | 83 | 2 | $217 | 84% |
| SA | 133 | 103 | 9 | $225 | 77% |
| TAS | 44 | 39 | 2 | $170 | 89% |
NSW fires the day-ahead signal most often in absolute terms (160 region-days) but SA remains the region where it is worth the most attention — both day-ahead and, as Section 1.4 shows, in whether the signal survives into the same-day update. QLD sits at the other extreme: 36 day-ahead flags without a single genuine ≥$1,000 outcome across the whole period.
2.3 Has the Pattern Changed Over the Year?
Day-ahead flag volume has risen through 2026 even as the collapse rate has stayed high. April and May 2026 recorded a 100% collapse rate on the day-ahead measure before volume roughly doubled into June and July alongside the transition to the higher $23,200/MWh Maximum Price Cap from 1 July 2026 — the same Maximum Price Cap level behind the 29 July episode.
| Month | Day-ahead flags | Collapsed (<$300) | Genuine (≥$1,000) | Collapse % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-07 | 57 | 48 | 2 | 84% |
| 2025-08 | 70 | 52 | 0 | 74% |
| 2025-09 | 40 | 30 | 1 | 75% |
| 2025-10 | 39 | 32 | 0 | 82% |
| 2025-11 | 8 | 5 | 2 | 62% |
| 2025-12 | 27 | 21 | 2 | 78% |
| 2026-01 | 13 | 7 | 5 | 54% |
| 2026-02 | 17 | 12 | 3 | 71% |
| 2026-03 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 60% |
| 2026-04 | 17 | 17 | 0 | 100% |
| 2026-05 | 49 | 49 | 0 | 100% |
| 2026-06 | 56 | 49 | 2 | 88% |
| 2026-07 | 74 | 63 | 4 | 85% |
2.4 When the Call Is Real
Every actual outcome of $5,000/MWh or more recorded since 1 July 2025 is listed below, alongside whether the prior day's predispatch had flagged it. Some 12 of the 15 genuine events (80%) had been flagged day-ahead — the day-ahead cycle is a good trigger, even though most of its flags at Maximum Price Cap level do not go on to materialise. The three misses — TAS on 12 January, QLD on 15 January and SA on 27 January 2026 — are a reminder that the process also occasionally fails in the other direction, missing a genuine event with no day-ahead warning at all.
July 2026 did produce one genuine, correctly-flagged event of its own — SA, TAS and VIC all cleared $5,000/MWh on 8 July — before the month settled into the unusually calm conditions described in Section 1.3, culminating in the fully-resolved false alarm around 29 July.
| Date | Region | Actual daily maximum RRP | Day-ahead flagged? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02-Jul | SA | $11,711 | Yes |
| 25-Nov | NSW | $5,984 | Yes |
| 26-Nov | NSW | $10,342 | Yes |
| 19-Dec | NSW | $5,773 | Yes |
| 06-Jan | SA | $14,578 | Yes |
| 10-Jan | NSW | $11,862 | Yes |
| 12-Jan | TAS | $6,835 | No |
| 15-Jan | QLD | $5,142 | No |
| 26-Jan | SA | $20,158 | Yes |
| 27-Jan | SA | $5,388 | No |
| 21-Jun | SA | $8,689 | Yes |
| 22-Jun | SA | $20,300 | Yes |
| 08-Jul | SA | $5,083 | Yes |
| 08-Jul | TAS | $5,146 | Yes |
| 08-Jul | VIC | $5,757 | Yes |
3.0 Conclusion
The 29 July episode and the year of data behind it point to the same conclusion. Predispatch is continually re-run and is designed as a signal for the market to respond. It is a live phenomena, that matures over time with a lot of moving parts on both the supply and demand side.
It is noted that a generator will attract less scrutiny by offering more capacity in the lower price bands, than the inverse, so there is natural tendency for extreme prices to soften. Demand side response not registered in the Wholesale Demand Response program is also a free agent and AEMO and the supply-side of the market have no forewarning of intended behaviours. They can only rely upon past experience as to the likely market demand response to extreme prices. As home batteries and eventually electric vehicles with vehicle-to-grid technology become more prevalent, the art of forecasting extreme price events will become more challenging.
Disclaimer and Notes
Energybyte is published by Empower Analytics Pty Ltd (ABN 38630239002), Authorised Representative no 1274453 of Capital Treasury Solutions (AFSL 429066). Any questions or feedback must be directed to Empower Analytics Pty Ltd as the sole publisher.
