Chinese “kill switches” have been found hidden in American solar farms, prompting calls for Ed Miliband to halt the rollout of renewables.
On Thursday, the Energy Secretary was urged to impose an “immediate pause” on his green energy blitz to review whether UK solar plants are also at risk.
The components found in the US included cellular radios capable of switching off the equipment remotely, raising serious concerns about grid security, according to Reuters.
They were found inside power inverters manufactured by unnamed Chinese companies.
Power inverters are the key links between solar or wind farms and the rest of the power system, converting their electricity so the wider grid can use it.
One source told Reuters that compromising such equipment would give Beijing the ability to inflict blackouts on the West, claiming it would create “a built-in way to physically destroy the grid”.
Not an option. They have to be connected to something, the grid has to be able to monitor and coordinate power plants of any kind remotely and for a solar power plant the inverters are where a lot of that logic happens. Obviously it’s not going to have a public IP accessible to the whole internet, it may not even be connecting across the public internet at all but at the very least there are data collection and monitoring networks woven throughout the entire country and there are all sorts of ways anyone with nation-state level resources, nevermind China who manufactures and supplies so much of the world’s technology, might gain access to them.
So connect it to LAN then for fucks sake, no need to put everything on the internet.