SA: No guarantees on power says treasurer

AAP General News (Australia)
12-03-1999
SA: No guarantees on power says treasurer

ADELAIDE, Dec 3 AAP - The South Australian government said today it could not rule
out a repeat of yesterday's massive power failure which blacked out more than half the
state.

As an official investigation began, Treasurer Rob Lucas said there could be no guarantees
that blackouts could be avoided when acts of God or breakdowns were involved.

But he said yesterday's problems supported the government's strategy to bring a new
power station at Pelican Point on line to ease the demand on existing supplies.

"What we're wanting to do is to try and ensure that through in-state generation and
further interconnection we've got a spread of risk," Mr Lucas told ABC radio.

"So that if one of our interconnectors goes down or one of our power stations goes
down, we've actually got back-up supplies from a number of areas.

"In terms of long-term security that's the sort of sensible long-term planning the
government is engaging in.

"In the end nobody, can guarantee supplies with 100 per cent certainty.

"But what we can do is minimise the risk."

About 400,000 electricity customers were affected by blackouts yesterday after two
generation units at Port Augusta went off line and the interconnection from Victoria was
lost.

The interconnector was restored but later in the afternoon another generating unit
at Torrens Island, off Adelaide's coast, failed, hampering efforts to restore power.

The National Electricity Market Management Company directed SA's electricity transmission
company, Electranet SA to start rotating power cuts to minimise the impact of power shortages
to any one customer.

Residential customers in Adelaide, the state's south-east and the Riverland region
bore the brunt of the outages, losing power for an average of one-and-a-half hours.

A lightning strike or wind blowing material into equipment was thought to have caused
the fault at Port Augusta, 280km north-west of Adelaide.

It was unknown what caused the problems at Torrens Island and investigations were also
continuing into why the interconnection with Victoria was lost.

The power problems came as the SA govt was taking bids to privatise the state's electricity
supplies, but Mr Lucas said rather than being concerned, a potential buyer might see the
issue as a potential opportunity.

AAP tjd/it

KEYWORD: ELECTRICITY DAYLEAD

1999 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.