This article was published by The Energy Mix on June 27, 2025.
By Chris Bonasia
Jurisdictions accelerating toward clean energy can learn from South Australia, where a rooftop solar boom reshaped the grid and pushed regulators to adapt in real time, says an industry executive.
“Let’s be honest: we didn’t do it because we had a vision board,” electricity distributor SA Power Networks (SAPN) CEO Andrew Bills told an energy conference in Melbourne mid-June. “We did it because we had to.”
South Australia now regularly meets all of the state’s demand with rooftop solar, sending wholesale prices into negative territory for thousands of hours a year, reports Renew Economy.
Customers led the way, Bills said. They installed rooftop solar at world-leading rates, invested in batteries, and adopted new technologies. And meanwhile, those customers were being asked to accept major changes as energy systems evolve—like electrifying their homes, buying an EV, and trusting that prices on energy bills will come down, he added. When the actual experience of adopting those changes doesn’t match expectations, “that gap—between expectation and lived experience—is precarious.”
“My message, my caution, is, we haven’t got time to muck around,” Bills warned, adding that other jurisdictions needn’t start from scratch.
“South Australia has set a national blueprint within the regulatory framework we already have,” Bills said. “What we need now is the national will—to scale what works and close the trust gap before it grows wider.”
He invoked a “burning platform” metaphor to describe the rapid changes looming over energy systems in other jurisdictions. The metaphor stems from a real-life event—where a worker was forced to plunge 30 metres into icy waters to escape a burning oil platform—emphasizing how extreme circumstances can necessitate rapid change.
By November 2021, South Australia’s rooftop solar-integrated grid had grown to become the world’s first gigawatt-scale grid to reach zero demand, when rooftop solar generation—with other small unscheduled generators such as small solar farms and bioenergy—surpassed all customer load requirements. But while the system’s adaptation was successful, its rapid expansion became a “burning platform” for regulators that had to redefine their role. As Bills described, this meant switching from “managing poles and wires” to managing an energy system.
“We’re actively taking part in the orchestration of how energy flows—not just from large generators to homes, but from homes, from businesses, and back again—all in real time, and all to ensure the system stays reliable and delivers value.”
The shift hadn’t been entirely smooth. At the rate that customers installed rooftop solar and other technologies, SAPN had to act fast to keep up, and made some mistakes along the way.
Bills gave the example of a past mandate that all rooftop solar installations could be remotely switched off during a grid emergency—which became obsolete as SAPN figured out how to better control output.
SAPN also faced issues linked to surplus energy that hadn’t been planned for, including two severe minimum-system-load events—when demand dropped low enough to destabilize the system—in October 2020 and March 2021. During the March event, SAPN had been ordered to curtail 71 megawatts of photovoltaic systems. The firm now has a curtailment protocol built into its operations, which it has implemented at least eight times in 2022 and 2023, reports the Guardian.
Bills warned that other jurisdictions will soon face similar circumstances, but they “don’t have to wait for the fire.” Instead, they can look to SAPN’s experience to implement key reforms at the outset.
He claimed that much of the work for the transition requires “surprisingly simple shifts,” like better use of data, more targeted customer incentives, improved coordination, and “unlocking flexibility that already exists in the system.”
“We’re working the system harder and smarter, to unlock the full value of the infrastructure and in-home technology that customers have already paid for,” said Bills.
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