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Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

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bogomipz

>"South Australia sold its state owned electricity grid to Chinese owners for 200 years."

That's something of a stretch.

State Grid Corp of China bought a 41% stake in South Australia's transmission network owner ElectraNet. See:

https://archive.is/0yXEH

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That was 14 years later. The initial privatisation was in 1999 and retail went to AGL and power distribution was sold to Cheung Kong Infrastructure from Hong Kong. They retain majority ownership. State Grid of China is a much more recent investment in transmission and not as controversial as the original privatization of the entire public utility. Australia isn't against foreign investment or Chinese investment in particular. I added China more or less as clickbait but the real problem was the lack of public interest and the impact it has had on livability and the economy. I believe the SA grid operator has the highest profit per customer in the country which probably means they are some of the highest per customer in the world.

The 200 year lease was mentioned as it is unusually long and there was some misrepresentation over the length of the lease to people who voted for it and the public.

The question of sovereign interests is real. The original nationalisation in the 50s or 60s was I think due to issues the state government had with the British owners interests not aligning with the state's ambitions. But at the time of sale tensions with China were not the same and the problem was that it was a terrible deal for the state that led to a subsequent explosion in power prices.

The "electricity grid" is composed of many parts both in South Australia and elsewhere. The components are generation, transmission, distribution and retail suppliers. Cheung Kong Infrastructure aka CKI's current position is only 23% of the distribution network.[1]

So no, they did not "sell the grid" to China.

[1] https://www.cki.com.hk/english/ourBusiness/home/inv_au.htm

The distribution side, the poles and wires that supply power to homes and businesses is entirely supplied by SA Power Networks in this state. They are the sole distributor and 51% is owned by CKI and just as disturbingly in my opinion the other 49% is owned by Spark who got bought out and are now also foreign owned by a group led by private equity firm KKR. This segment of the power business is a natural monopoly unlike retail and generation which are both competitive markets and while it is regulated, the regulations can and reportedly are gamed. SA pays outrageous power prices which are well documented.

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