The head of Australia’s energy market regulator is “concerned” about avoiding blackouts next summer and says the proposed Tesla lithium ion battery in South Australia is a “very important part of our summer plan”.

Speaking at an industry event in Melbourne on Tuesday, the Australian Energy Market Operator chief executive, Audrey Zibelman, said the regulator would do everything it could to ensure the project was built within the 100-day deadline set by the Tesla founder, Elon Musk, saying missing that deadline was “not really an option”.

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“I think the biggest thing is to recognise is this: as we’re looking at next summer … we are concerned, we are concerned about the amount of resources going in next summer, so the battery in South Australia, the gas plant in South Australia, the battery investments that Victoria are looking at, are all very important parts of our summer plan,” she said.

But Nino Ficca, the managing director of the Victorian energy grid operator AusNet, who also spoke at the function, warned that the new battery, which will be the largest lithium ion battery in the world, should not be viewed as a solution to the energy problems plaguing the grid, which led to blackouts in SA last year.

“That the battery in SA is a wonderful shift in what we can do but it’s not a panacea for anything,” Ficca said.

Zibelman said a carbon tax, or an enforced clean energy target, would be “useful and helpful for clarity”.

“But when I look at what’s happening organically in the system, the falling cost of solar, the falling cost of wind, some of the economic decisions that folks are making, the expected falling cost of storage – these things are going to happen anyway,” she said.

Ficca said investment might occur in a “suboptimal way” without a carbon price to “guide investment”.

“My guess is that we may find that we regret some investment decisions or lack of some investment decisions somewhere down the track … I don’t think you need to be Einstein to predict that,” he said.

Zibelman was recruited to Aemo from the New York state Public Service Commission in March and has just completed her first 100 days in the role.

She said the energy crisis in Australia was an opportunity to provide a modern, flexible energy network, and her priority was to form the recommendations of the Finkel review into a plan that could be approved by the Council of Australian Governments. Coag will hold an energy meeting on Friday.

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Among the reforms that will be put to state and territory energy ministers at Coag is a proposal to “unpack” the energy price and set different price signals within the market, similar to those used in telecommunications markets.

“We have got to make these changes and we don’t want to waste this crisis … we want to move this stuff forward,” Zibelman said.

“We need to come up with an actionable plan with details, bring them back to Coag, so they have the confidence to know that what we’ve come up with is something that people will invest in and it’s driving value to consumers.”

Zibelman said expecting existing energy markets to cope with a changing power environment that included greater reliance on renewable energy was unrealistic.

Between 2008 and 2017, she said, coal-produced energy in grid had dropped 14% from 27,000 MWh to 23,000 MWh and wind had increased 263% from 1,100 MWh in 2008 to 4,000 MWh. By 2020, wind power is expected to increase to 10,000 MWh.

“Without question you can’t take a look at the system and say, ‘Oh, you can operate it the same way,’” she said.