After 4 power blackouts in 4 months, the highest electricity prices in the country, and the the highest unemployment, investors are avoiding South Australia and existing businesses are folding.

Wetherill's solution to this crisis was to expand the interconnect, but now with Victoria's huge brown coal tax Hazelwood power station is closing:

"A plan for South Australia to import­ more baseload power from Victoria to ease its power crisis has been suspended by the national electricity market operator because of a “potential stabil­ity issue” linked to the state’s wind-reliant grid."

Essentially Victoria is cutting off South Australia to avoid the risk of network contagion, as the SA's demand when wind and solar power drop off is likely to coincide with Victoria's high demand when its wind and solar drop off.

"South Australia’s Labor government, which has a renewable energy target of 50 per cent by 2025, encouraged the closure of its last coal-fired power station in May last year, as its renewable energy mix rose above 40 per cent."

SA is looking increasingly like having to reverse its renewable policies at huge cost. It is already having to pay Pelican point a vast sum to reopen and provide back up, the question is whether it will be forced to re open the coal fired power station, and cut back on the renewable power generation?

How could SA nnever become a failed State,
it has Senator Sarah Hanson-Young to look after it in the Federal sphere and Mark Parnell MLC and Tammy Franks MLC, all good Greens, to help prop up Wetherill's wacky ideas.

Send in an administrator.

Dear SM,

Well now you are laughing, but South Australia is getting better-prepared for the post-electricity era then the rest!

Take the test: I wonder how many matches and candles you can find in your home?

Dear Is Mise,

The people of South Australia are going to be free and your sinister administrator will stumble in the dark: nobody is able to impose their rule over people who are not addicted to power!

How many states have a taxi driver as treasurer? SA does. Taxi drivers are important, necessary people. Too important to be playing playing treasurers. The stupidity of the man is amazing.

SA is fully functional; it is not a failed state and nor is it becoming one.
However it is a state that has had more failures than most.
And many of those failures are down to ideology, but not in the way you think.

The real problem is a fear of debt. In the 1990s the state Liberals (recognising the large debt from Labor's failed commercial ventures could be a useful scapegoat) promoted the meme that our state debt was a millstone holding us down, preventing us from doing anything much.

Instead of properly investing to meet future requirements, the government ended up pursuing false economies to cut the debt figure. One of those was the privatisation of ETSA, resulting in the state government effectively losing control of electricity supply and pricing. IIRC SA's electricity supply was at its most unreliable in late 2000 / early 2001.

Since then, investment in wind and solar power has put downward pressure on electricity prices, but they're being financed in a rather inefficient way (cross subsidies and no special access to cheap finance). Unfortunately the government's reluctant to get more directly involved. But that problem's not unique to SA, and so far this month Queensland has had higher wholesale prices than SA - see http://reneweconomy.com.au/jumping-electricity-prices-gas-gas-gas-60783/

The network contagion issue is a technical problem that will be addressed - stop treating it like an insurmountable obstacle! And there's no chance at all of reopening the coal fired power station; it's been demolished and good riddance. And it would be incredibly dumb to cut back on renewable power generation; doing so would increase our electricity prices. What we really need is solar thermal, plus a connection to Broken Hill so that northern SA never gets cut off again.

Aidan,

Have you been living overseas, the price of electricity has nearly doubled due to the vast subsidies for the renewable power and solar thermal will double it again.

The price of power in Victoria is set to increase by 10% from the closure of Hazelwood, and even more from renewable subsidies. On top of which Victoria will have less spare capacity to provide support when Tasmania and SA renewables dip.

The SA labor government should be taken out and flogged for vast incompetence.