The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has expressed massive concerns about the federal government's planned “solar peak law” to stabilize the power grid. There is a “significant risk potential,” said a spokesman for the authority responsible for defending against cyber threats to “Welt am Sonntag”. The background is that Chinese companies and thus the central government in Beijing have direct access to a system-relevant part of the German electricity supply via the internet-enabled components of solar systems.
Confusion about inverters
With its planned law, the federal government wants to use the control devices of solar systems called “inverters” to curb green electricity surpluses in the low-consumption period around Easter and Pentecost. The majority of the inverters used in Germany come from Chinese manufacturers and could be controlled remotely by them via the Internet.
At the instructions of the network operators, inverter manufacturers should be required to remotely remove solar roofs from the grid if system stability requires this. With the “Law to Avoid Surpluses in Electricity Generation”, the federal government wants to prevent network operators from having to specifically bring about regional power shutdowns in Germany in order to keep the frequency in the network stable.
“Significant risk potential”
The Federal Office for Information Security warned against bringing Chinese companies into this role. “The BSI is very critical of implementing network-serving remote control of inverters via manufacturers,” explained a spokesman for the authority. “The BSI believes that the fact that manufacturers have direct access to such a large number of devices in the European network, possibly via a cloud located abroad, poses a significant risk.”
Hackers could also gain access, the authority explained: “In addition to the manufacturer's direct access, security gaps in the products or the manufacturer's cloud can also enable third parties to gain unauthorized access.” According to the BSI, “energy transition systems, such as PV systems, should operated as locally as possible and the network-friendly control of these systems should be implemented via intelligent measuring systems.” However, Germany is lagging far behind when it comes to expanding these measurement systems.
