Paul Starick: Tongue-tied leaders struggle with latest major South Australian blackout

REALITY has caught up with our political leaders, who are now effectively tongue-tied when attempting to explain why a major blackout again gripped the state, writes Paul Starick.

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FEW household essentials are as complicated as electricity, from deciphering quarterly bills to unravelling the gobbledygook used to explain the grid.

This complexity has, until recently, helped political leaders lull South Australians into a false sense of security about the fragility of the state’s electricity supply network.

But reality has caught up and political leaders are now effectively tongue-tied when attempting to explain why, yet again, a major blackout has gripped the state.

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In part, state Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis was caught out by the technical nature of the electricity supply system when attempting to explain the consequences of Wednesday night’s blackout of 200,000 homes.

By itself, this blackout would be relatively insignificant, apart from the sheer number of people affected. It started just after 1am yesterday and power was restored by 2.15am.

This is, self-evidently, not a critical time for householders or industry. If it were an isolated incident, it would probably be shrugged off with minimal political impact.

But Opposition Leader Steven Marshall was able to seize upon it and accurately brand SA as the state with the highest power prices and lowest energy security.

In the wake of September’s statewide blackout, there is an expectation that this latest outage is, unfortunately, another sign of the new norm in this state.

Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg is urging South Australians to consider this new norm unacceptable and is right to do so. In concert with Mr Koutsantonis and other state ministers, Mr Frydenberg is spearheading national reforms designed to address the challenges posed by the need to reduce carbon emissions and maintain energy security.

These reforms include increasing affordable and reliable gas supply to generators and bringing down network costs through regulatory change.

Mr Koutsantonis is pushing a new high-voltage interconnector with New South Wales, which ironically would bring in more coal-fired power into SA’s grid, which has world-leading renewable generation.

But there is no quick fix to high prices and unreliable supply, which have been exacerbated since the Northern Power Station at Port Augusta closed in May.

Questions over the grid’s security have been posed for some time by credible figures, like the Australian Energy Council’s Matthew Warren, yet it is only now these warnings are being realised.

An extraordinary storm, blamed for September’s statewide blackout, helped state Labor mask wider problems with electricity security.

Political cover was afforded by the complexity of explaining issues like system frequency and intermittent, non-synchronous generation.

But, with yet another blackout and likely more on the way, the explanation gets trickier and, with a state election looming, the political consequences more severe.