Roundup: Aussie state scrambling to prevent power reserves from running out within months

Tasmanian leaders are scrambling to ensure the isolated Australian state does not run out of power within months, after losing the bulk of its two main power sources.

As Tasmanian parliament resumes on Tuesday, solutions to the energy crisis have dominated the agenda.

In December last year, the connection to one of the state's main energy networks -- the Bass Strait interconnector, an undersea cable between Australia's mainland and Tasmania -- was severed, sparking fears that the state may not have sufficient electricity to power the region.

On Tuesday, Basslink CEO Malcolm Eccles, head of the company that owns the network, said maintenance workers had finally detected the stretch of cable thought to be causing the problem.

"While there remains some more days of work and analysis to be done before we can provide a more accurate estimate of return to service, it is an important milestone," Eccles said on Tuesday.

However, Eccles admitted there were no visual signs of damage to the cable at first glance.

The faulty cable will be transferred to Melbourne for further inspection and a replacement fitted and fully operational by the end of May, he said.

In the meantime, Tasmania's Energy Minister Matthew Groom, who recently met with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman in Canberra to discuss the crisis, said the issue reinforced the need for new underwater pipeline to run alongside the existing structure.

"From our perspective we think the present circumstances have reinforced the case for a second interconnector, it's highlighted the energy security aspect of a second interconnector," Groom told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Tuesday.

As of December last year, before the fault, Tasmania was importing around 40 percent of its power from the mainland through the cable.

Traditionally, Tasmania has been predominately self-sufficient in terms of its energy requirements, relying mostly on the state government-owned network of 30 hydro-electric dams and other renewable energy set-ups.

However, low rainfall has severely impacted dam-water levels, which now sit at 15.5 percent, giving rise to fears that both Tasmania's main power channels will be simultaneously out of action.

Hydro Tasmania, the group that operates the water-driven power network, has been forced to import 200 diesel generators from mainland Australia and turn on a nearby power station that had been previously decommissioned.

Without these measures power would have run dry by May this year, the group said.

To safeguard against this, Groom is also reportedly weighing up an increase to government subsidies for solar panels and asking the Federal government to flex their legislative might.

Tasmania's Opposition Leader, Bryan Green, hinted that it was time Canberra's leaders came to the state's aid, in the form of funding the solar feed-in tariff, given the situation was now becoming dire.

"That's a long-term cost associated with energy coming back into the grid," Green said. Endit