Electricity Trust of South Australia

The Electricity Trust of South Australia (ETSA) was the South Australian Government-owned monopoly vertically integrated electricity provider from 1946 until its privatisation in 1999 by Liberal Party Premier John Olsen. The privatisation, which broke Olsen's 1997 election promises not to privatise the Trust, lead to immediate price increases for consumers, the loss of ongoing revenue for the state budget and lead to the cancellation of proposed interstate grid connections in order to protect the value of the newly private assets. By 2017 the privatisation had caused South Australia to have the highest electricity prices in the world.

Charles Todd, who oversaw telegraphic communications in the colony and beyond, also introduced the idea of electrical street lighting, necessitating a public electricity supply. An Act of Parliament created the South Australian Electric Company in 1882, but the company did not ever start to produce electricity, owing mainly to opposition by those holding interests in the South Australian Gas Company, which supplied power using coal gas.

The South Australian Electric Light and Motive Power Company was registered in March 1895 and was authorised to provide power throughout the colony of South Australia. Previously, municipal councils had been empowered to provide electricity within their areas, but none did so. The company started to supply electricity from its Nile Street generator to the streets of Port Adelaide on 1 January 1899, but the quality was poor.

Around the turn of the century, things started to change, firstly through the appointment of engineer Frederick William Herbert Wheadon (1872–1947) to the company in 1899, and then through British interests in the company. The directors of the SA Electric Light and Motive Power company were based in London, and in the same year, assisted by Wheadon, the English Brush Electrical Engineering Company along with the Electric Lighting and Traction Company of Australia, which had interests in Victoria, bought the company, with all of its assets. In 1900 the City of Adelaide signed a contract with the South Australian Electric Light and Motive Power Company to provide the power for King William Street's lighting, which also enabled the provision of electricity to private customers.

A temporary generating plant in Tam O’Shanter Place at the corner of Devonshire Place (off Grenfell Street) began supplying electricity to Adelaide in 1900. Wheadon in the meantime created plans for a new coal-fired power station on the corner of Grenfell Street and East Terrace, with the main buildings fronting Grenfell Street designed by South Australian architect Alfred Wells in a single-storey design. The new power station, incorporating boilers, steam generators and a direct current (DC) electric generator able to distribute 400 kilowatts, opened on 19 November 1901. It provided electricity to North Adelaide in 1902, with Norwood Unley, Hindmarsh and Thebarton following over the next ten years.

On 31 August 1904 ownership of the company passed to the privately owned and London-based Adelaide Electric Supply Company (AESC, or AESCo). Over time the company extended electricity supply via a network of substations to most of the suburbs and other settled areas of the state, as well as the electric tramway system in Adelaide, by 1926. The invention and use of the Stobie pole contributed to the success of the rollout by the company.

In 1912 the original building was substantially remodelled into a double-storey building that included offices, a laboratory, a room for testing the various instruments, and the company's switchboard and other communications systems. Two tall brick chimneys stood parallel to Grenfell Street behind the main building (demolished in 1926), and entrances to some of the buildings opened onto East Terrace.

By 1917, the output of the power station was 12,000 kilowatts, driven by the great demand. Wheadon and other directors of AESCo foresaw that technical problems would inhibit increasing the power output at that site, and started working on plans for a new site at Osborne on the Port River. Construction was delayed by the outbreak of World War I in 1918.