Experts warn that photovoltaics could serve as a powerful weapon in China's hands in the event of a conflict
The increasing number of photovoltaic power plants, which can mostly be remotely controlled via manufacturers' servers, could pose a significant security threat in a conflict with China. China could potentially disable these photovoltaics, leading to a collapse of the energy grid.
Rapidly expanding photovoltaic power plants on the rooftops of households, corporate buildings, but also for example schools, could become one of Beijing's powerful weapons in the event of a conflict with China. Most modern control systems for photovoltaic power plants, including those for households, use software from Chinese companies, which could potentially be risky.
While the risk of espionage from companies like Huawei or ByteDance, which is better known as the operator of the social network TikTok, is being addressed by politicians and security agencies in most EU countries, other risks from Chinese companies remain hidden. One of them could be the software controlling photovoltaic power plants.
These currently do not pose any significant threat in countries like the Czech Republic, as photovoltaics still make up only a small part of the energy grid. In countries like Germany, however, which is becoming increasingly dependent on electricity supplies from renewable sources, control over the energy grid under China's thumb via many supplier firms could cause huge problems.
The systems that will be a potential threat are rapidly increasing in Germany and will likely grow even more in the coming years. A law is set to come into force in the country, requiring all appliance connections over 7 kW, such as heat pumps, wallboxes, and photovoltaics to be network-controllable and disconnectable in case of grid instability. For this reason, these devices will include wireless control technologies, which could also be a potential security threat.
According to Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), in the worst-case scenarios, there could be influence on these technologies from the Chinese side. Chinese companies are controlled by the local government, and in the event of a conflict, it could use these technologies against its enemy. Remote disconnection of photovoltaic power plants from the grid could thus cause its instability, eventually ending in a so-called blackout.
BSI has already warned against adopting a new law that would mandate remote control of photovoltaic inverters, for example through the manufacturer's cloud servers. "BSI is very critical of implementing remote network control of inverters via their manufacturers", representatives of the office told the German weekly Welt am Sonntag.