By the time that blackout occurred, the grid was already quite stable and rolling blackouts were a thing of the past. The state-wide blackout was the result of a severe storm, which included lightning, gale-force winds and three tornadoes, taking out critical transmission lines, combined with inadequate protection circuits not set up to account for lightning strikes. When the state failed over to the Victoria interconnect, the interconnect shut down because the load was too high. So although the grid was stable, it had some failure points that were exposed during this severe and unusual storm.

The battery array was just one measure taken to increase grid resilience in such a scenario. The general idea was to have an instantly dispatchable electricity supply ready to go at any time while bringing gas-powered electricity online. A nice side effect of the battery is that it flattens out wholesale price spikes and makes a bit of money for itself in the process.