The Australian Energy Market Operator says it was not asleep at the wheel after another electricity shortage in South Australia on Wednesday caused blackouts for 40,000 people.



Senior managers from the electricity market operator faced combative questioning about their management of the South Australian weather event during a Senate committee hearing in Canberra on Friday.

As other states battled extreme temperatures, and faced the risk of blackouts, and as political debate continued to rage about energy policy, David Swift, executive general manager of corporate development at Aemo, defended the performance of his agency despite admitting there had been an error in their forecasting on the day of the blackout this week.

“We certainly weren’t asleep at the wheel,” Swift told the committee.

Swift went through Aemo’s actions on the day of theblackout. He said Aemo issued market notices in response to what he described as “an unprecedented level of demand”, but despite the market price being very high, there had been no market response.

While the Turnbull government has made much of the role of intermittent renewable energy technologies as a contributor to a run of blackouts in South Australia over the past few months – Swift told the committee the problem on Wednesday was existing thermal generators were not available to come on line.

He said there were three thermal generators in the state on the day that were not available to meet the surge in demand. This lack of availability was attributed to “technical issues”.

Swift confirmed Aemo had powers to direct plants to activate during periods of high demand,