Before the lights were even back on, people opposed to renewable energy were blaming South Australia's heavy reliance on renewable energy for the all-state outage.

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said the event should start a national conversation about renewable energy and condemned SA for being "ideological" in its approach.

The independent regulator later found system faults caused nine of the 13 wind farms in the state to go offline, tripping a connector to Victoria and sending the whole of South Australia into the black.