I actually live in Adelaide. There is a fair bit of history that got them to the infrastructure they have put into place. Here goes.
ETSA (Electricity Trust of South Australia) was a state owned asset. As always happens, some bright spark decides the private sector could do the job better, so the Liberal Govt. sold their asset to private companies. These companies then culled half the work force to "cost cut" and improve productivity. Unfortunately these were mainly blue collar maintenance workers. they have then over the space of the last 25 years only used band aid solutions on the power network. Then in the last 5 years other things came into play. "inefficient" power plants, such as the big one in Port Augusta (country South Australia) were decommissioned with no new power producing plant to replace it, because we were all connected to the national grid. Unfortunately for South Australia we only had ONE interconnector to the national grid. As normally happens, something unforseen happened. The "perfect storm" (pun intended). We had a hot day with massive power consumption, and gale force winds that blew over about half a dozen of the interconnector towers. That plunged the stste into darkness for around 6 hours( Not me. Batteries and an inverter were a good insurance policy - Which pissed of my neighbors LOL)
Then the blame game started. Federal liberal government pointing the finger ant the labour State government and vice versa. Then the State government thought they would take Elon Musk up on his offer: Built in 100 days of signing or its free. Also a side bet of 50 MILLION was placed with an Aussie businessman that it couldn`t be done. Silly bet. he was able to start prepping before contract was signed, and I think it was done in 80 days. It was built near a wind farm to act as a buffer.
A lot has been said about it only being able to power 30,00 homes for an hour. There is a reason for that. They have 9 Diesel generators that can then kick in to get us through this summer. After that, they will be converted to gas generators.
So we had a sub standard privatised power network, with them whinging they cant fix the problems without price hikes (90% in the last five years) and yet we still had a blackout, because they never looked after the infrastructure or thought to spend the money on a second interconnector. The present labour government wanted to take some control back to prop up the network, which the Liberal government, if they get in in the next election, is already talking about selling!!
There is also talk of a solar thermal plant replacing the old power station at Port Augusta.
Better than a soap opera.....
Marz.