What’s Going on With South Australia’s Power?

Wondering what all the fuss is about?

Last September, South Australia went through a state-wide blackout. This year, its power was intentionally cut during a heatwave, because there was not enough power to meet demand.

SA Premier Jay Weatherill recently announced a half-a-billion-dollar plan to prop up the state's fragile power supply, which received a fairly dismissive response from Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg as a "$550 million admission of failure". It all led to an awkward clashing at a press conference over energy policy.

As South Australia stumbles into this energy crisis, numerous innovators have joined in to provide potential solutions to the state's power woes.

Among the group of contributors, billionaire tech entrepreneur and boss of Tesla, Elon Musk, pitched the idea of installing a battery farm that would be capable of energy storage and fixing the system. If he can't install it within 100 days, the company will do so for free.

This idea was enough to get Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the phone. According to a statement from the Prime Minister's office, "the pair had an in-depth discussion on the value of storage and the future of the electricity system."

However, federal government frontbencher Matt Canavan has spoken out by saying the phone call was merely a general conversation about the future of technology, and was not really specific to South Australia. Canavan, who has championed coal-fired power, believes that a battery farm is just one option of many.

The Tesla CEO's offer also attracted the attention of another billionaire tech guru. Atlassian co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, set the ball rolling through Twitter by offering to find the funding and political will to support the battery farm, while also asking Musk for "mates rates" and some time to sort things out.

@mcannonbrookes Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2017

@elonmusk legend! ☀️ You’re on mate. Give me 7 days to try sort out politics & funding. DM me a quote for approx 100MW cost - mates rates!

— Mike Cannon-Brookes (@mcannonbrookes) March 10, 2017

Tesla has actually executed a challenge like this one for a power company in Southern California. The battery farm, located in Ontario (not the Canadian one), contains close to 400 white industrial boxes packed into 1.5 acres of land. Inside the boxes are thousands of battery cells that are similarly used in the company's electric cars.

What's not clear about this plan is the cost of it all, or who would pay for it. Tesla has not revealed the price of the Californian battery farm; however, it is a possibility that a system big enough for South Australia could run into the tens, or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

It's also worth noting that Tesla isn't the only company pitching grid scale storage to fix South Australia's power problems. In one case, a solar powered battery storage system has already been introduced as a solution by the Australian company Zen Energy. Quite a number of Australian and international companies have proposed solutions to this crisis for months, but may have fallen on deaf ears.

So, where to next for SA? Will their proposed gas-fired power plant solve their ongoing issues, or will Elon Musk receive the green light? We’ll have to wait and see.

Ratria Nindita is one of Student Edge’s student contributors. See more student contributions here.

Photo: Fox