It didn’t take long after the failure of South Australia’s two biggest gas plants late on Friday afternoon for the abuse to start flowing.

As Australia’s big solar market gears up for a potentially “huge” 2017, 2016 has been chalked up as another record year for utility-scale solar, globally, with cumulative capacity falling just short of 100GW, and a new annual record for new installations set at almost 35GW.

More than 100 Canberra homes and businesses have installed heavily subsidised battery storage systems through the ACT’s Next Generation Renewables Energy Storage Grants program.

Blackouts were averted in SA on Friday after an incident that saw more than 600MW of electricity generation capacity suddenly lost – just as Adelaide was welcoming the start of Clipsal 500 and Adelaide Festival.