CANBERRA, March 13 (Xinhua) -- An Australian government frontbencher has played down a recent discussion which took place between Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Elon Musk, founder of car and tech company Tesla.
Last week, Musk offered to solve Australia's ongoing energy woes within 100 days by creating a high-tech battery storage system; the state of South Australia has been crippled by four major blackouts in the past six months, casting doubts over the state's current energy sources.
However Senator Matt Canavan, Minister for Resources, described the phone call as "just a discussion", and played down talks the government might take up Musk's offer.
"I think it's just discussions at this point, and I don't believe anything specific to South Australia was discussed, but we support all technologies," Canavan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Monday.
"The Prime Minister is right in saying that we as a country need to look at all of the above, we will need a mix of energy sources going forward."
Overnight, a representative from the Prime Minister's office said that Turnbull had an "in-depth" discussion with the Tesla CEO but nothing had yet come of the proposal.
"The pair had an in-depth discussion on the value of storage and the future of the electricity system," a statement from Turnbull's office said.
Canavan said while Musk's offer was generous, there was a need to have varied sources of power to ensure a strong electricity grid, and using only battery storage energy would be "fraught with danger".
"For a politician to stand up and say that I've got the solution, all we need is 100 megawatt of batteries is fraught with danger," Canavan told the ABC.
"What we should be doing is setting up the right system and framework in place to guarantee energy security over time." Enditem
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