Australia Weather News

Power may not be restored to Eyre Peninsula homes until the early hours of the morning after twin tornadoes and wild weather caused significant damage to transmission towers in South Australia.

Residents, including people in the town of Port Lincoln, have been without power since about 4:00pm on Wednesday when the entire state was blacked out.

Port Lincoln has been operating under duress with limited water supplies, downed phone lines and businesses and schools shut.

SA Power Networks spokesperson Paul Roberts said the cause of the outage on Eyre Peninsula had been detected.

"If all goes to plan, we're hoping to restore power this evening to all the customers," he said.

"That'll be about 8,500 to 9,000 customers in the Lower Eyre Peninsula."

SA Police Superintendent Andrew Thiele said supermarkets had not been able to stock some staple foods.

"People aren't able to get petrol for their cars. They can't get cash out of the ATM and of course they can't keep themselves warm with heating," he said.

SA Water works to maintain supplies

SA Water said power generators had arrived in Port Lincoln to help fill water storage tanks and maintain supplies.

"Once mains power is restored, these generators will remain in the area as backup in case of further power outages," a spokesperson said.

"There are currently sufficient storage levels to ensure water supply continuity."

Premier Jay Weatherill has spent time visiting families in a Port Lincoln relief centre.

He said on Thursday that twin tornadoes destroyed three elements of critical infrastructure, which led to the system protecting itself with a shutdown.

Some parts of Adelaide were left in darkness for more than 12 hours while many in regional SA continue to live in darkness.

Electranet said partial supply to Port Lincoln and surrounds was "achieved throughout the morning but issues with back-up generation meant the supply was not continuous".

It said transmission supply had been restored to Leigh Creek and Pimba in the state's far north.

About 1,000 people in the Adelaide Hills are also in the dark, with power unlikely to be restored until Saturday.

The Australian Energy Market Operator plans to conduct an inquiry into the outage.