Tesla Powerpacks in South Australia. (credit: Tesla) The new premier of South Australia, Steven Marshall, is unconvinced about a virtual power plant project that had been proposed by Tesla and accepted by Jay Weatherill, the Australian state's previous premier, in February. The project aims to put thousands of solar panels and batteries on South Australian homes, starting with public Housing Trust properties, to create a 250MW distributed "power plant," which can respond to grid signals and isolate itself (or "island") during outages.