Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took advantage of the state-wide blackout in South Australia to question SA's commitment to renewable energy sources.  Problem is, one subject has nothoing to do with the other.

"I regret to say that a number of the state Labor governments have over the years set priorities and renewable targets that are extremely aggressive, extremely unrealistic, and have paid little or no attention to energy security," said the Prime Minister.

The once-in-50 years storm lashed South Australia on Wednesday, pulling down 22 electricity transmission poles.  Meanwhile, more than 80,000 lightning strikes hit SA including one that was a direct strike on a power station.  

"It had nothing to do with wind generation.  It's all very confusing for people, and politicians are using it as an opportunity to get on their ideological hobby horses," said Hugh Saddler of infrastructure specialists Pitt & Sherry.  "It's a transmission system failure.  It's a rare event but one that has happened in various places around the world, including much larger events in the US and Canada," he said to Fairfax Media.

Wind knocked out transmission lines from interstate.  But gas-fired generators close to Adelaide couldn't make up for missing supply quickly enough.  "The loss of so much capacity led quite quickly to the automatic disconnection of the interconnectors and hence the cascading failure of the South Australian power system," Bruce Mountain, director of carbon and energy markets at consultants CME.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was not happy with the PM and coalition "playing politics with what is a natural disaster", and questioned Mr. Turnbull's timing:  "If they want to play the blame game, surely isn't it appropriate to wait until all the houses have their power back on?" he posited.  "This government will do anything to politicise an issue, a disaster," Mr. Shorten continued, "The fact that we've had a one in 50-year storm is not due to renewable energy, it's due to the weather."

SA Premier Jay Weatherill agreed and defending his state's renewable energy targets:  "There will (always) be somebody who will use a crisis to pull out their real agenda, which is they don't like renewable energy," Mr. Weatehrhill said.

"If South Australia was powered entirely by coal, rather than by 40 per cent clean renewable energy, as it is, this blackout would still have happened," said Australian Conservation Foundation's campaigns director Paul Sinclair.