They are only starting to gain a foothold in the Australian market, but could batteries provide a near overnight solution to the energy woes that have hit South Australia and risk spreading east?

At least one company believes so. In an elaborate launch in a former power substation in suburban Newport, in Melbourne's west, Tesla Inc said its technology could provide a fix within 100 days.

The Californian company's energy products vice-president Lyndon Rive said it could install up to 300 megawatt hours of grid-scale battery storage in that timeframe at a cost of about $66 million per 100 megawatt hours.

"If you had storage deployed during the blackout [in] South Australia you wouldn't have had the blackout," Mr Rive said.