SA weather: State-wide power loss raises 'serious questions', Josh Frydenberg says

Updated

Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg says serious questions will be raised about how the entirety of South Australia could be left without electricity in the wake of a huge storm, dubbed the largest in 50 years.

On Wednesday afternoon, the electricity network operator SA Power Networks confirmed South Australia was without power, after serious issues with the main electricity distribution lines feeding power from interstate.

"It's clearly not adequate because the ramifications are huge for so many people involved," Mr Frydenberg told the ABC's 7:30.

"So these are the questions that myself and the Prime Minister and the energy ministers and the premiers across the states and indeed across the territories, are asking in the coming weeks.

"Because of the combination of events, indeed it was a perfect storm, in more ways than one, which had an impact across the grid in South Australia and that has led to these events.

"It's very preliminary observations, because the storms are still occurring across South Australia, but we do know that transmission towers were blown over in the north.

"We do know that there's been a lightning strike at a power station and the combination of these events and, indeed, other events has led to a frequency surge, an electricity surge, across the interconnector which then forced it to shut down as a matter of safety and to protect people and to protect the equipment."

He said there would be an investigation into the cause.

Xenophon links incident to SA's reliance on renewable energy

Mr Frydenberg said more than 40 per cent of South Australia's energy supply comes from renewable energy, but emphasised that was not the cause for the blackout.

"That does raise questions for the stability of the system — not just for supply, because when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, electricity is not being generated — but also for the stability of the system because of the frequency that is generated as opposed to base-load power which has historically been more coal and more gas," Mr Frydenberg said.

"So questions are raised by the virtue of the increasing amount of renewables, but it has to be underlined that this was a weather event which led to this occurrence."

South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon disagreed, and described the incident as unprecedented.

"This is a disgrace. How did this happen? How is an entire state blacked out?" Senator Xenophon told the ABC.

"This is unprecedented in this nation. We need answers. There needs to be an independent inquiry, independent of government, because this is a disgrace.

"The generators don't work when the wind is blowing too hard. This is one of the great paradoxes in relation to this."

Senator Xenophon linked the incident to South Australia's reliance on renewable energy.

"I support renewable energy, I support the Renewable Energy Target, but it's how you achieve it and how you achieve sensible greenhouse gas reduction policies," he said.

"This has not been sensible, it has been reckless — we have relied too much on wind rather than baseload renewables, rather than baseload power, including gas which is a fossil fuel but it is 50 per cent cleaner than coal and a good transitional fuel.

"We need a full independent inquiry. What I'm worried about now is that there are many vulnerable people in my home state that are at real risk of their health so we need to deal with that — this is an emergency.

"This is a textbook case of how not to do it and I cannot fathom, I can't believe, that my state is in darkness at the moment.

"This should not have happened and if heads have to roll, so be it."

Topics: weather, disasters-and-accidents, government-and-politics, states-and-territories, sa

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