Is Elon Musk's giant battery really the answer to South Australia's power woes?

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An energy expert says the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery built in South Australia by technology billionaire Elon Musk will help the state move towards renewable energy.

Monash Energy Materials and Systems Institute’s Ariel Liebman said South Australia’s power problem was not as bad as it had been made out to be, but the battery was a “good idea” as a “learning exercise”.

“What the battery will do is provide a little bit of additional support in very extreme events that primarily might be caused by things like tornadoes coming through, and this could happen to any power system,” Dr Liebman told SBS News.

“Particularly South Australia has been susceptible to such of things is because it’s relatively small and skinny system.

“The problems that are reported due to renewables are mostly untrue.”

Dr Liebman said the battery could have helped prevent the state-wide blackout that affected about 1.7 million people in September last year, when at least seven tornadoes blew through cities and towns, fell more than 20 transmission towers and brought down major powerlines.

But he said he could not be sure if the outage could have been avoided.

“It’s hard to tell because to analyse that and to answer that clearly requires a bunch of very sophisticated modelling that we haven’t done and not many people have done and not many people are actually capable doing, and it requires a whole bunch of data that is not publicly available,” he said.

“So the answer is it may have helped prevent that, but there are some things that no power system could withstand. And what happened on September 28 last year was a massive weather event.”

Despite this, Dr Liebman said it was a good learning experience for those who manage South Australia’s power services especially as the state moved to renewable energy.

Tech tycoon Elon Musk speaking in Adelaide.

“I think it’s a great idea to get a battery installation of this size going as soon as possible so we learn how to use these sorts of installations to balance supply and demand, and help manage frequency and voltage when necessary,” he said.

“As we move towards 100 per cent renewables then we will need actually a lot of these sorts of installations.

“It’s crazy to wait until we’re 50 per cent renewables in Australia and then start learning how to put and operate these sort of batteries in the system. You need to get ready in advance.”

Dr Liebman also encouraged other states to consider installing similar batteries.

“I think the other Australian states should be putting it in, not rushing, but they should be learning how to do this,” he said.

“Because they will need these sort of installations and similar installations, also technology such as pumped hydro storage, solar thermal with thermal storage and all sorts of other energy balancing technologies we need more of as we move to 100 per cent renewables.

“You can’t do it until you’ve done it, so we’ve got to start doing it first.”

Following last year’s blackout, Mr Musk was challenged by fellow tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes via Twitter to solve South Australia’s energy problems, agreeing to pay up on the $50 million bet he had with the Tesla boss.

Mr Musk responded if he could not build a 100-megawatt battery in 100 days from signing the contract, he would provide it free.

The facility in Jamestown, in South Australia’s mid-north region, has the capacity to power 30,000 homes for up to an hour in the event of a severe blackout but is more likely to be called into action to even out electricity supplies at less critical times.