‘Rogue’ Chinese spyware found on solar, battery equipment

Reuters reported last week that U.S. energy officials are looking into “unexplained communication equipment” in Chinese-made renewables technology. The federal government has “not publicly acknowledged the discoveries” and the two people speaking on the matter did not have permission to speak to media.  

Reuters reports:

Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.

However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said.

Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said…

The rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences, the two people said…

“That effectively means there is a built-in way to physically destroy the grid,” one of the people said.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington had a predictable response when contacted by Reuters: “We oppose the generalization of the concept of national security, distorting and smearing China’s infrastructure achievements.”

Unfortunately, national security is an important concept that the U.S. is finally starting to understand in the context of the electric grid. Several efforts are underway in Congress to bolster U.S. national security, including one bill that prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from using its funds to procure batteries from six Chinese-owned and operated companies beginning in October 2027. Some utilities, like Florida Power & Light, are attempting to minimize their use of Chinese inverters.

Chinese-owned Hauwei is “the world’s largest supplier of inverters,” and accounts for 29% of shipments in 2022, followed by Sungrow and Ginlong Solis — also Chinese-owned. Chinese companies are required by law to cooperate with their government’s intelligence agencies, which could allow the government to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely.

There is a strong case that procuring critical minerals from other countries endangers the U.S. electric grid, as American Experiment described in its October 2024 report “Mission Impossible.” As the penetration of wind and solar grows in U.S. regional grids, the country becomes more dependent on the foreign countries that predominantly mine and process the minerals needed for that technology.

Sourcing manufactured items like wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries from overseas means that the U.S. could have trouble obtaining what it needs for grid reliability when tensions are high. The Reuters report exposes another risk: the parts that we’ve already installed open backdoors that make the grid vulnerable to widespread blackouts and damage infrastructure.