StopThese Things tells us that they hear that SA grid managers are running the system at 220V, not 230V (like the rest of Australia) in order to cope with the fluxes from wind power. It would be good to get confirmation of that. In November 2015 after a large blackout in South Australia, StopTheseThings predicted that after the coal plant was shut in April 2016, there would be statewide blackouts:
It’s also to be borne in mind that these 110,000 homes and businesses were plunged into darkness at a time when SA’s Northern and Playford coal-fired plants at Port Augusta (with a combined capacity of 784 MW) were still happily chugging away.
The owner of Port Augusta’s plants, Alinta has already signalled that it will close them in April 2016, due to the market distortions caused by the massive subsidies to wind power set up under the Large-Scale RET (renewable energy targets). If it does, South Australians can expect statewide blackouts with the kind of regularity that you’d be hard pressed to find outside of sub-Saharan Africa.