A prominent economist says Australia's experiment with the privatized National Electricity Market has been a failure, and the government needs to buy back the nation's electricity grid.

Professor John Quiggin from University of Queensland says publicly owned electricity grid is the only way to put a cap on costs, keep energy competitive and solve the country's energy crisis.  The problem with privatization is that it needs to generate profits, which public ownership wouldn't have to worry about.

"It's about the failure of the electricity network as a whole to deliver the kind of outcomes that have been promised for the last 25 years or so," Professor Quiggin told the ABC.  "The starting point for fixing things is a proper, publicly owned national grid."

With money going out the door to shareholders, Australia's privatized system hasn't been able to keep up with challenges and failures such as the South Australian blackout, the problems with loss of power at the Portland aluminium smelter, and the failure of Basslink which links Tasmania to Victoria.

"The problem is greatly exacerbated by disputes between the distributors in Tasmania, the owners of Basslink - largely the Singapore Government - and then failure to regulate and handle the whole business properly," Professor Quiggin said.  "Simply it's very clear that what we're seeing is that the investment planning isn't taking place correctly and that the system of regulation isn't working correctly."

The solution is public ownership.

"These are assets which were paying their own way for the best part of 100 years before we privatized them," said Quiggin.