​For a battery in Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM), location has become one of the largest levers on returns. This makes nodal price forecasting essential for accurate revenue modelling.

The prices a battery trades against, the losses on every settled dollar, and the congestion around its connection point are all set at the node. Revenue forecasts, though, have typically been regional: a state reduced to one point or a few zones, with the same dispatch and curtailment for each battery within. Modo Energy's price forecast is now modelled on a nodal basis.

The same 100 MW, four-hour battery earns a different return at every connection point. At the best-connected node in each of NSW's ten renewable energy zones (REZs), it earns 0.1 to 1.7 unlevered IRR points less than at the state reference node. In north Queensland, the gap reaches 3.3 points. On a battery underwritten to a low-double-digit IRR, a swing that size decides whether a project clears its hurdle rate.

Executive summary

• REZ forecasts land 0.1 to 3.3 unlevered IRR points below their state reference nodes. North Queensland's zones sit furthest adrift at 6.9% to 7.3% against South Pine's 10.2%.
• Every location is uniquely impacted by MLF and congestion. Marginal loss factors impact inland NSW and South Australia as congestion limits far-west NSW; in north Queensland the two weigh roughly equally.
• Congestion has a time-of-day shape that decides when a battery trades.
• Congestion migrates across the forecast horizon: relieving one corridor loads another, and constraints that lack future augmentations, like Adelaide's metro chain, climb toward a third of all hours by 2050.

Behind five reference prices sits a nodal network

Every generator in the NEM is paid its regional reference price, scaled by its marginal loss factor (MLF). Dispatch is decided differently, by the line ratings and stability limits that determine which assets can run.

Market-standard forecasting works subregionally. AEMO's Integrated System Plan (ISP) models the NEM as fifteen subregions joined by transfer limits. It shows how much power moves between zones. It cannot show which assets inside a zone get constrained off, or what a connection point's MLF will be.

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Modo Energy's price forecast now solves network-constrained dispatch across more than 200 nodes, at five-minute resolution, out to 2054. The modelled network includes every operational transmission line at 220 kV and above, plus the HVDC interconnectors. By expanding the network to over 200 nodes, the forecast can closely emulate the behaviour of the NEM’s dispatch engine (NEMDE).

Congestion moves around the grid within a single day

2 February 2030 is an illustrative high-stress summer day in the forecast. Far-west solar corridors saturate around midday, and the Hunter and Sydney feeds tighten into the evening peak. EnergyConnect carries South Australian energy into NSW all day, held at its limit through the evening.