Energy in South Australia
Gas is delivered from these fields by pipeline to users interstate and to Port Adelaide where it fuels three separate gas-fired power plants.
As late as 2002, South Australia obtained 100% of its electricity supply from fossil fuels, with 30% being imported from coal generators in other states.
Since the commencement of gas field development at Moomba in the 1950s and 1960s, electricity has been produced by gas-fueled generators at utility scale.
[10] The largest fossil-fuel generation precinct is located on the Le Fevre Peninsula near Port Adelaide, where multiple separate power plants are in operation.
The entire electricity grid was privately owned due to the neoliberal politics of the 1990's, and the federal government had the greatest regulatory power over the energy market.
[9] The Australian Government invested AUD 1 million dollars in 2011 commissioning a study by Macquarie Capital, WorleyParsons and Baker & McKenzie to investigate the state's electricity transmission capacity and potential for expansion of renewable energy in South Australia.
The first investment of AUD 1.6 million will be spent over two years to create a South Australian Centre for Geothermal Research, in conjunction with the University of Adelaide.
[13][14][15] Two utilities have deployed house batteries to provide grid services in a virtual power plant and reduce need for network upgrades.
However many of the facilities did not provide technical system strength to ensure that the grid remained stable and reliable under fluctuations in supply or demand.
This meant that even when the wind was blowing strongly, the Australian Energy Market Operator demanded that a number of gas-fired generators be turned on to provide system inertia.
Average pollution reached a low point, at 0.26 tonnes per MWh in 2020-21, and power cost at $48/MWh was the lowest of the mainland states.
[31] Members of the federal government, including Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, blamed the blackout on South Australia's reliance on renewable energy despite the lack of evidence that this was the cause.
"[33] The Australian Energy Market Operator ultimately cited overly sensitive protection mechanisms as the cause of the blackout.
The Australian Energy Regulator later alleged that the Pelican Point Power Station had failed to inform the AEMO that it could operate at full capacity, which would have prevented the need for offloading and the blackout.
The South Australian Government's Retailer Energy Efficiency Scheme supplies rebates for the installation of solar hot water heat pumps.
[43] It will be surpassed by Maoneng's Gould Creek battery project, which was approved in late 2021 and once constructed will have a storage capacity of 450 MWh.
[44] Smaller batteries also play a role in maintaining grid stability as renewable energy production rises and falls.
[49] Unlike many other parts of the world such as New Zealand and Iceland where geothermal energy sources result from circulating groundwater heated by a shallow magma source, heat flow in South Australia primarily results from elevated concentrations of radiogenic nuclides such as uranium-238, thorium-232 and potassium-40 in granitic basement rocks.
[50] The radiogenic concentration of basement rock in the South Australian Heat Flow Anomaly (SAHFA) is over three times greater than the global mean for similar regions.
[51] Due to the low permeability of granite, the hot rocks must undergo hydraulic fracturing and be stimulated to allow a flow of water through the system to produce energy.
[53] Petratherm propose developing the geothermal energy in the more permeable sedimentary rocks that overlay the hot granite, a process called Heat Exchange Within Insulator (HEWI).
[56] Both the state and federal government are making efforts to support and sponsor research for realizing geothermal energy commercially.
[59] South Australia's only hydroelectric generation is the 3 MW Terminal Storage Mini Hydro installed in SA Water supply pipes in a northeastern suburb of Adelaide.
An investigation into the feasibility of constructing pumped hydroelectric energy storage in Cultana was completed in 2020, which determined that the revenue uncertainty and high capital cost made it unviable.
