Secret comms devices, radios, hidden in solar inverters from China. Would you like a Blackout with that?
By Jo Nova
Nice grid you have there, shame if someone suddenly… switched it off
Two insiders at the US Dept of Energy say they have found covert devices inside solar panel inverters and batteries that would allow them to communicate with China. Even though firewalls have been put in place, these backdoor devices could operate around them.
Last August a Dutch white hat hacker got into 4 million panels in 150 countries in an effort to warn the West that major infrastructure was vulnerable. A month later an Australian cyber expert warned that a foreign hacker could turn our home batteries into “pager-bombs” too. If a hostile power turned off the overcharge protection on a sunny day, millions of solar panels would be pumping excess electricity into batteries that have no safety cut off. A few houses start to go off like popcorn, and an hour later we’re all living at the Western Front. How exactly would our firemen cope if 1 in 100 homes caught fire at the same time, and then we had a blackout? Anyone?
Individual solar panel inverters are generally too small to trigger national security assessments, but right now at lunchtime solar power is the largest single source of electricity in Australia — making 13 gigawatts out of 27. That’s half our national supply. In summer it’s worse.
We’ve turned our duck curve into a sitting duck…
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/05/secret-comms-devices-radios-hidden-in-solar-inverters-from-china-would-you-like-a-blackout-with-that/
