Why a gas generator, South Australia? There are better options to lower power prices | Tristan Edis

Jay Weatherill was backed into a corner to produce an energy plan. But it is a grab bag of overlapping ideas that don't really make sense

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill is a politician panicked by a cynical and misleading campaign by his SA Liberal party opponents and the federal government to blame the state's high power prices and recent blackouts on his 50% renewable energy target.

He has rushed out a so-called energy plan which is more like a grab bag of overlapping ideas that will do little to lower power prices. Meanwhile, they run the risk of saddling SA energy consumers or taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in extra costs to support gas-fuelled generators that don't materially improve energy security when there's a lack of gas to fuel them.