Dalrymple Battery

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:12): My question is to the Minister for Energy. Is the Dalrymple battery providing an acceptable level of support to the southern Yorke Peninsula energy group? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr ELLIS: Southern Yorke Peninsula is subject to frequent power outages and flickers despite having a battery there to ostensibly provide grid stability and support during outages.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:13): I know the member is getting pretty frustrated with power outages caused by distributional transmission networks in his electorate, and he has every right to be frustrated about that. I don't blame him one bit and, in fact, he has been able to articulate on behalf of his constituents, I think quite eloquently, their concerns, the impacts on businesses, the impacts on enterprises, the impacts on the amenity of families in the area. They should have just as much right to regular and reliable power as everyone else, and it is getting quite frustrating.

I also add to that. Do you know who else is very frustrated with that? ElectraNet and SA Power Networks. They are also getting very, very frustrated, and the drought does have consequences for the impacts. I know it's difficult for us to hear the explanations from SA Power Networks and ElectraNet. I think that they are reasonable. We live in a time now when people turn their light switches on and aren't really interested in any excuses about why power isn't there, which is fair enough. We are a First World country; they deserve to turn the power on, and it should be there. But things do occur and we are working very, very hard to make sure that we can mitigate those issues caused by environmental factors that are causing blackouts, but it is important to note that it's never from a lack of supply, which is a fundamental difference.

Now, for context, in terms of the question the member asked—it's a good one—it is the Dalrymple battery near Stansbury on Yorke Peninsula. It's an 8-megawatt hour grid-connected battery. It was part of an ARENA grant. It's a relatively small-scale battery. It was developed by ElectraNet aiming to demonstrate how energy storage can support the grid while providing competitive market services. It has been operated by AGL since 2018 and continues to provide energy storage to support renewable generation and provide fast-frequency response.

The FCAS market, which batteries do service, is an auxiliary market to the National Electricity Market. This is a market that had been gamed by Gentailers for a long time. Providing frequency response in this alternative market was generating millions and millions of dollars worth of royalties to these companies. What batteries have done is basically soaked up that market and made it very hard for generators and other companies to profit off fast-frequency response. That's why batteries are a very, very good fast responding solution.

For example, a normal synchronist generator to respond to a frequency issue can take minutes, half an hour, maybe an hour; a battery can respond within under a second and stabilise a grid. It is a very, very important service to the grid but because they are fast and they are so numerous now, that market has considerably dropped, so it's a good service.

I am advised that the battery was one of the first in Australia to have a grid-forming inverter, which could establish a 50-hertz frequency that operates on a biological island. If Yorke Peninsula is ever islanded, it can actually provide frequency support as well, which is very, very important. I am running out of time, but if you are looking for a battery of this size, of 8-megawatt hours, to be able to supply the entire Yorke Peninsula with power if there is an issue, the answer to that would probably be no. You would need a lot more battery supply than just this, but its services are doing a lot to stabilise the grid, to help the grid be operated if it was ever islanded and give other benefits to consumers on Yorke Peninsula, but I share your frustrations.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Black I issue a final warning to the member for Morialta for addressing the Speaker without standing, and so it is an interjection which is against the standing orders, but also for disputing my not giving the leader the call.

For more than a year we have had—and you know this because you were the Leader of the Opposition Business—a system in place where the leader or the opposition gets four questions, the next question goes to an Independent and the next question goes to the government and then it returns to three to the opposition, one to the Independent and one to the government and so on. It was very clear, for anyone who can count to four, that it wasn't the opposition's turn for another question. I don't accept your challenge and I don't appreciate the interjection either.

Mr TEAGUE: Point of order. On the ruling that you have just now made, Speaker, I just note by reference to standing order 104 and, in turn, 106 that it is necessary according to the standing orders that if any other member is seeking the call they need to stand and seek the call. Conventions notwithstanding, which are helpful for the house, in my view at least, that is something we are all bound by in terms of the standing orders. In terms of the capacity for the call to be given elsewhere, a member needs to seek the call.

The SPEAKER: That was a frivolous and unnecessary point of order. The member for Narungga was about to stand up. I can see everyone from here and he was about to stand up when the leader stood up, so perhaps the member for Narungga thought he had miscounted. We have some very, very simple rules in place in here where it is an orderly fashion.

If you look at the statistics since I have been the Speaker, the opposition has had by far more questions to the government of the day than happened under your Speakership, under the leader's Speakership or under the member for Kavel's Speakership. If you want to change the system, we will go one to one, all day every day.