Biden-era officials reportedly overlooked warnings that imported Chinese solar panel components posed risks to the American power grid, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
America’s reliance on Chinese-linked solar panel inverters gives China an opportunity to sabotage the U.S. power grid, the Post reported, citing new research from Strider Technologies. The report and cybersecurity experts warned that this dependency poses a national security threat as the inverter devices in solar panels could be remotely triggered to precipitate cascading blackouts, the Post noted.
Power inverters are often made in China and are used to connect solar panels and wind turbines to the power grid. The Post does not clarify what warnings specifically were brought to the Biden administration in regard to national security risks linked to Chinese inverters.
When experts at the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national labs brought similar concerns to senior policymakers under former President Joe Biden, the warnings were overlooked, according to an anonymous U.S. official that spoke to the Post.
“They were not excited to hear that clean energy technology made in China could pose a speed bump in the green energy transition,” the official told the Post. “You don’t need to turn off the entire western area power [grid] to create societal panic. … All you need to do is create some number of significant incidents that are widely reported to create the same effect.”
More than 85 percent of utilities surveyed anonymously are using inverters from companies linked to the Chinese government and military, the Post reported. The Strider Technologies report notes that it “surveyed utility and energy companies representing approximately 12% of U.S. installed capacity.”
“DOE continually assesses risk associated with emerging technologies for the energy sector. It is critical for those procuring to have a full understanding of the capabilities of the products received,” a DOE spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “While the Biden administration made our grid less secure and reliable, the Trump Administration is committed to reducing dependence on foreign supply chains and advancing affordable, reliable and secure energy access to the American people.”
Chinese officials told the Post that the concern is baseless, though the publication noted that the researchers found evidence indicating Chinese engineers have been probing the U.S. power grid for exploitable vulnerabilities. The Strider Technologies report also notes that a 2017 Chinese national security law means that the Chinese government “has the capacity to compel any [People’s Republic of China] PRC entity to assist in state intelligence efforts.”
“Since 2015, the PRC has exported billions of kilograms of inverters and related equipment into the United States, resulting in widespread deployment across utilities, solar farms, and energy storage networks,” the report states. “This widespread reliance creates a strategic vulnerability: the Chinese government, through its control over [the People’s Republic of China] PRC firms and data networks, could exploit this access to manipulate or disrupt the U.S. grid in a crisis.”
The Strider Technologies report continues to note that almost 3,000 PRC research publications were “studying attacks to, or vulnerabilities of, power grids — many of which have never been translated into English. At least 225 of these publications are highly relevant to potential U.S. grid attacks according to Strider’s methodology.”
Former chairman and CEO of Southern Company Thomas Fanning told the Post that “there is plenty of evidence that would suggest this is a risk that needs to be addressed.”
Fanning told the Post that potential dangers extended “way beyond losing power … to potentially compromising other critical sector systems, including finance and communications.”
“Now we are debating whether they [the Chinese government] will pull the trigger and what the impact would be,” CEO of Strider Greg Levesque told the Post. “The capability is there; the gun is loaded.”
Reuters reported in May that officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices found in solar panels after “rogue communication devices” were found in the energy resource components.
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