The question of whether last week's blackout in South Australia was entirely storm-related or attributable in some part to the state's heavy reliance on renewable energy sources continues to rage, days after the state was plunged into darkness. The latest volley is a preliminary report on the outage prepared by the Australian Energy Market Operator that found a sudden reduction in electricity being generated by six wind farms as the extreme weather front hit caused the Heywood interconnector supplying SA with Victorian-generated electricity to became overloaded, triggering an automatic shut-down to prevent widespread system damage.
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The finding linking intermittent renewables to the outage won't cause Premier Jay Weatherill to recant his declaration made last week (and oft-repeated since then) that it was damage to high-voltage transmission lines that triggered the event. Weather, ipso facto, caused the blackout. His agitation was undoubtedly driven in part by criticism from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Energy Minster Josh Frydenberg that that growing use of renewables in SA had made the state's power networks more vulnerable to outages.
Unsurprisingly, other Labor leaders, notably Bill Shorten, defended Mr Weatherill's assertions – and here in the ACT, the Labor government reiterated its commitment to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020.
Political ideology has always cast a shadow over renewables discussion and policy-setting in Australia, and this latest manifestation of that divide is regrettable. Despite having an abundance of cheap, high-quality coal, Australia needs to develop its renewables industry, if only because coal-burning is becoming more socially unacceptable every year. Developing renewables expertise, in part by having governments set ambitious targets for solar and wind energy uptake, will help defray the loss of national income as coal exports decline, which they inevitably will.
In enabling the march of renewables, however, it's important that governments recognise its limitations and technological shortcomings and ensure, as far as possible, reliability of supply. As Mr Turnbull pointed out, reliable, reasonably priced electricity is critical to economic progress, and essential in states like SA, struggling as it is to attract new industries to replace the loss of car manufacturing. Unfortunately, price and reliability have become an issue since SA governments began pursuing ambitious targets.
Realistically, adoption of these targets was always going to present technical challenges, and to necessitate flexibility of outlook when dealing with the intermittent nature of renewables. Power imports are an important contingency factor, and SA may seek to expand these as a result of last week's storm. The cost to consumers, however, will be significant if the state goes down that path. On the plus side, the storm should provide valuable lessons in how to better integrate renewable energy into the power grid while ensuring that it can withstand future storms.
As energy ministers meet in Melbourne on Friday to discuss the wrinkles exposed by SA's blackout, they should not lose sight of the fact that experience and technological advances, including in battery storage, will inevitably resolve some of the issues that arose.
