Chinese inverters in small solar power plants represent a potential security threat to Czechia, the country’s National Cyber and Information Security Agency (Núkib) has said.
A statement published by the agency said between 95% and 99% of the solar inverters used in small PV plants in Czechia come from China, and added that both the hardware and software in small PV installations in Czechia are typically Chinese.
Núkib’s briefing said there are risks regarding data protection and, in extreme cases, remote manipulation. It also said inverters can be vulnerable to cyber threats through the collection and misuse of user data, as well as the possibility of malicious applications or firmware updates.
The statement also noted the current legislative environment between the Chinese government and Chinese companies as a concern. It said that, with the Chinese legal environment mandating the cooperation of Chinese companies with the state, if China wanted to destabilize the Czech electricity grid through Chinese suppliers, it could almost certainly do so.
The agency said Czechia should act proactively and ensure Chinese inverters are not the de facto option for consumers. It also suggested that the conditional warranty on an inverter could be changed from connection to a Chinese data logger to a European one, but advised that the legality and feasibility of such a procedure would have to be assessed by relevant Czech and European institutions.
Núkib’s statement on solar inverters is part of wider advice from the agency on lessening the reliance on Chinese servers. It has instructed critical infrastructure organizations in the country to avoid using Chinese technology or transferring user data to servers located in China and has identified other high-risk products, alongside solar inverters, including electric vehicles, smartphones, large language models and medical technologies.
Jan Krčmář, Executive Director of Czech solar association Solární Asociace, told pv magazine that while any move to improve cybersecurity should be seen as a positive, “we need to be conscious of the fact that as a society we are reliant on imports from China almost everywhere.”
“If we want to tackle the situation systematically, we need to incentivise manufacturing in Europe,” Krčmář said. “But especially Czechia needs to do its homework first, given that, for example, Fronius has been trying to expand its production facilities in Southern Czechia for years but has come up against permitting issues.”
“If we cannot build or expand factories, transport infrastructure and especially new, cheap renewable energy because of permitting problems and local opposition, we cannot at the same time complain about reliance on China,” Krčmář added.
Earlier this year, SolarPower Europe published a report on cybersecurity concerns surrounding solar installations in the European Union.
Since then, the Dutch government has said it is remaining vigilant to potential cybersecurity threats from solar inverters, while Lithuania has already banned remote Chinese access to management systems of solar, wind and storage facilities.
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Perhaps time for Europe to designate just one European country solely to build just the inverters, for the whole European continent, within European electrical specs.
Another European country designated to manufacture solely just the batteries.
Thereby lowering the cost risk of inter-European competition and ensuring an affordable cost factor to break the Chinese dependence…