August 7, 2023
The government must act immediately to assess the risk of foreign-made solar panel technology or risk a targeted attack that could result in wide scale blackouts and the destabilisation of power grids, a leading cyber research body has warned.
The Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre on Monday raised alarm over the threat posed by solar inverters – which refer to the technology that converts solar energy to electricity – with Beijing now dominating up to 76 per cent of global market supply.
Under China’s national intelligence laws, companies supplying solar inverters could be ordered to conduct surveillance activities and provide any information back to Beijing, or to disrupt Australian power supplies.
Cyber Security CRC chief executive Rachael Falk said the danger of foreign-owned cyber inverters had only become apparent in recent years after the advent of “smart” devices.
“Traditionally, cyber risk with solar inverters was low because they were not connected to the internet. However, as the popularity of smart home energy systems has boomed, this has changed, with most solar inverters now web connected,” she said.
“While an attack on one home solar system would not impact the grid, scaled, targeted simultaneous attacks could be catastrophic, resulting in a ‘black start’ event. In a black start event, power plants are incapable of turning back on without reliance on an auxiliary power source, like a generator or battery. This could bring down an entire power grid and it could take a week to recover.”
The CRC recommended cyber security impact assessments be completed for all solar inverters being sold in Australia and mandatory cyber security ratings be introduced for solar inverters.
“Inverters assessed as having serious cyber security vulnerabilities should be removed from sale and recalled from use, or appropriate security fixes applied if available,” the report stated.
Ms Falk said the problem surrounding solar inverters was comparable to that relating to Australia’s 5G network, with the government in 2018 choosing to ban “high risk vendors” from the market.
“Our eyes are open to the risks and we need to act now, not let the matter sit until it’s too late,” she said.
“Australians are vulnerable here and we need to move quickly to protect ourselves.”
The research comes as Opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson revealed he had launched an audit on every federal government department to reveal which were using foreign-owned solar inverters.
“Thousands of these products are being installed every week,” he said.
“We urgently need a plan from the Albanese government before they become too deeply embedded in the grid.”
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil told the Australian last month the government was “working across the economy to identify threats to our national security”, which had been ignored for the last decade.
