The entire state was plunged into the pre-electricity era yesterday at around 4.20pm local time after a series of heavy storms with winds up to 140km per hour swept the state, damaging more than 20 transmission lines.
Lightning strike knocked at least power station offline, and sparked surges in the grid.
The result was strain being placed on the two interconnectors that link the South Australian electricity grid with the east coast, tripping safeguards which shut down the power supply to the state.
Experts say the 'one-in-50 year' weather event couldn't have been prevented by expanding coal, gas or even nuclear baseload power as the fault was with the transmission network, which shut itself down to protect itself from further damage, something that has little to do with renewables.
SA has the highest rate of renewable energy in the country, with around 40% coming from wind and solar farms. It relies on coal fired power from the east coast for the balance.
When SA closed the aging Port Augusta power plant in May the Australian Energy Council warned the state would have less back-up energy available.
SA Premier Jay Weatherall said the blackouts would have happened with the Port Augusta power station in place, and he said the state had sufficient back-up baseload power, particularly once the Murray Link and Heywood Interconnector are running at full capacity.
There is no indication having more interconnectors would have prevented the issue, he said.
The Gratton Institute's Tony Wood told the ABC that an investigation into the unprecedented grid disruption would help other states and territories plan for significant weather events hitting power infrastructure.
"There's no evidence to suggest this was caused by too much wind power, or the dependence on wind power, or anything else, or would've been any different if any of the power stations that had been shut down earlier this year had still been operating," Wood said.
"If you've got a wind farm or a coal-fired power station at the end of a transmission line, and that system either is taken out by a storm or is forced to shut down to protect itself from a storm, it doesn't matter what the energy source is."
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said serious questions would be raised about the management of the SA grid, but he downplayed the role of renewables, saying it was primarily a weather event, although he did say how the grid responded was of interest to the Council of Australian Governments.
"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," Frydenberg also told the ABC.
South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon told the national broadcaster the entire debacle was "a disgrace" and that "heads should roll".
While he supports renewables he said SA had put all its eggs in one basket, relying on wind rather than baseload power, and suggested the state should look to increase its gas generation capacity, something the SA government has been pushing in recent weeks with a number of new initiatives.
AGL Energy said it had activated a range of responses to support affected customers and was working to bring back the Torrens Island power station near Adelaide is progressively being brought back into the electricity network under the coordination of the Australian Energy Market Operator.
The company said its wind farms are on standby to generate, subject to network availability.
Energy News understands the Trustpower-owned Snowtown wind farm, 150km north of Adelaide, was actually able to put power into the grid to support the early restoration of power until gas-fired turbines could be fired up.
Earlier this week, the Grattan Institute released a report detailing the pressure high uptake in renewables had put on the state's wholesale power prices, and how it was being viewed as a test case for the rest of the nation.
The Climate Institute said SA could be seen as a test case for decarbonising the Australian grid, but said the opportunity to identify solutions to the real causes of the statewide blackout, and thereby help Australia prepare for the future, will be lost if anti-renewable energy agendas are allowed to overtake a careful investigation of the situation.
"Reviews of this state-wide blackout must focus on the preparedness of our energy networks to cope with extreme weather, which is predicted to become more frequent in our future," CI CEO John Connor said.
The group warned in 2012 that Australia's electricity system to be "underprepared" for the impacts of climate change and assessed the risk of damage from more extreme wind intensity and rainfall as "high".
AEMO has declared the spot market suspended in the SA region, and is working with transmission network service provider ElectraNet to identify and understand the severity of the fault.
Energy News also understands the oil and gas fields in the Cooper Basin were unaffected by the weather.
