Power for the People: A history of electricity in Sydney

I can recall as a young child that the blackouts would hit our house in Roseville usually around dinnertime. "That dratted Mr Conde!" my mother would curse, as she rummaged through the cupboard under the sink for the candles. The Mr Conde my mother was cursing was Harold Conde, who had been appointed the Emergency Electricity Commissioner. He was a much-maligned man, for in reality it was he who did more than anyone to solve the problem of the blackouts that plagued post-war Sydney.

1952 saw the SCC stripped of its generating role with the establishment of the NSW Electricity Commission. (Bunnerong had not been a success as it was bedevilled with labour problems as were the coalfields, until the new Menzies government and right-wing labour began to turn back the tide of militancy in the union movement). From then on, however, the SCC was purely a distributor or retailer of electricity.

The next few decades were the heyday of the SCC. Electricity usage boomed, kitchens were converted, showrooms bulged with new electric appliances, and the AGL went on to the back foot.

By the 1960s new high-rise buildings were going up in the city. New highways and bridges were being built. NASA asked Sydney to switch on its lights for passing astronauts. Suburban shopping centres like Roselands and Bankstown Square were opened, and new suburbs, serviced by electricity, sprawled across the Cumberland Plain.

The SCC grew too, moving in 1963 to its present building on the corner of Bathurst and George Streets. (The QVB had by then been saved). The authority installed its first computer, bought from IBM for 223,500 pounds. It had 1 Megabyte of RAM, and a new building was bought next door in Pitt Street to house its systems and network.

The Opera House opened. The New Cahill and Warringah Expressways were lit by the SCC, and fluorescent lights began to replace the old globe lamps in the streets.

In the 1970s, Sydney lit up for another Royal visit, a Papal tour, and the Bicentenary celebrations of Cook's landing, which as we now know from Banks' journal in the Mitchell Library, was also the 200th anniversary of electricity coming to Sydney.

Charles and Diana got married in July 1981, causing a power surge in Sydney at 9pm equivalent to 600,000 electric jugs being turned on.

By 1979 the SCC was taking 41 per cent of the State Electricity Commission's output. But the 1980s were a decade of uncertainty for the SCC, with talk of privatisation, and a threat from the gas fields in South Australia. The AGL, in a stroke of marketing brilliance, invented the term "natural gas" and began to make a comeback in power supply and distribution.

In 1989 the State Government began steps to take over the SCC, which had become a very profitable organisation. An initial levy on the SCC of $500 million went into State Govt coffers, and from then on an annual levy was imposed.

After a cursory inquiry, the Curran Report recommended corporatisation. The aldermen who ran the SCC resisted this, at least initially. By 1991 a new statutory authority, Sydney Electricity, was created and, though aldermen still had a role, the government now had the whip hand. The days of aldermanic – i.e. public - control were numbered.

Yet in fact Sydney Electricity was a short-lived entity. The authority was now on the path to full privatisation. From that time on it reported directly to the Minister, and its business was (and is) conducted behind closed doors.

In 1996 the recently elected Carr Government merged Sydney Electricity with Orion Energy, based in the Newcastle-Hunter region to create ENERGY AUSTRALIA.  Sydney Electricity's board was sacked. A new team mainly from Orion, took charge.

And today Energy Australia is just one of many sellers of energy in NSW, which, ironically, now includes the AGL.