Australia Weather News

It was "appalling management" and not cyclonic conditions that caused SA's power to be out for up to three days, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce says.

The devastating impact of a mid-latitude cyclone that smashed SA on Wednesday last week and brought with it several tornados has sparked nation-wide debate about the state's renewables and what contribution they made to the outage.

South Australia is 40 per cent reliant on renewables, mostly wind power, and questions are being asked about what role that had in the outage.

This is despite a regulatory report released yesterday admitting the primary cause of the outage was damage caused by severe weather.

It resulted in a Victorian interconnector shutting down to protect the system and, consequently, a statewide power outage.

The interim report, released by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), also said there was a reduction in wind farm generation at connection points leading up to the blackout, but more analysis was required to discern what that cause was.

Mr Joyce criticised the State Government for blaming the storm for the prolonged nature of the blackout.

"It wasn't a hurricane. It was a severe thunderstorm. They've had severe thunderstorms before," he said.

"But this idea that a storm caused the blackout. No rubbish, Sherlock, we got that part. But why couldn't you get the system up and running again?"

South Australia has the most expensive electricity in the nation and in July this year suffered a price spike when wholesale prices jumped from $60 MWh to $9,000 MWh.

"There's things in common. It's unreliable. It's expensive and it's in South Australia," Mr Joyce said.

"And now you've had power spikes in the last two months.

"You've got an absolute crisis down there. It's appalling management."

ElectraNet has begun installing temporary transmission towers in the state's Mid North to replace those which collapsed during the storm.

It said engineers had described the damage to the lattice steel towers, which were made in the 1980s, as unprecedented.

Power will be reconnected to large industrial users in the state's north before the temporary pylons are eventually replaced with new poles and wires before Christmas.

Economists in favour of renewables

A number of energy experts and economists have spoken in favour of renewable energy at a summit held in Adelaide today.

The State Government convened the meeting, as debate continues over the role of wind energy in the system shutdown.

Australia's Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel said his reading of the situation was that the source of the electricity was irrelevant.

"If you had a natural gas generator there, and the voltage was collapsing, and the frequency was collapsing, that natural gas generator would have taken itself off the grid just as rapidly as the wind farms had taken themselves off," Dr Finkel said.

"That is the intention of safety circuits — safety circuits at the end of the day protect the device."

Premier Jay Weatherill is touring Melrose today after officially opening Sundrop Farms' new solar powered greenhouse near Port Augusta.

The 20-hectare facility includes a field of more than 23,000 mirrors that capture the sunlight and direct it to a central receiver at the top of a 127-metre "power" tower.

Mr Weatherill acknowledged the intermittency of wind power was an issue that needed to be addressed urgently.

But he said the Federal Government should not be playing politics and should concentrate on a COAG energy summit in Melbourne on Friday.

"My [energy] minister will be going on Friday to propose a national enquiry."

He said South Australia would continue to move towards its renewable energy targets.

"The renewable future is South Australia's future. Nobody's going to be building anymore coal-fired power stations. It's completely unrealistic," Mr Weatherill said.

Port Lincoln MP seeks answers

Liberal Member for Flinders Peter Treloar said he wanted a detailed explanation about last week's outage, which caused parts of the Eyre Peninsula, including the town of Port Lincoln, to be blacked out for three days.

AEMO only made brief mention of Port Lincoln's situation, saying that all three back-up units "tripped" and multiple attempts to bring them back online failed.

"I won't rest until we found out what actually happened because it's all about energy security," Mr Treloar said.