“Balancing the risks and benefits of environmental initiatives”, by Roger Caiazza

Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York

Balancing the risks and benefits of environmental initiatives

• Home

• Menu

• About

• Contact

• Citizen’s Guide to the Climate Act Page

Renewable Generation Is Not Resilient

Recently Rory Christian, Chair and CEO of the Public Service Commission said, “We are modernizing the grid not to just take on the challenge of adopting more renewable energy but to create greater flexibility, greater resiliency and the ability to recover more quickly in the face of these extreme climate events”.  I believe that making our electric grid dependent upon weather-impacted resources is anything but resilient.  Richard Ellenbogen describes one resilience-related issue in this article.

Ellenbogen is the President [BIO] Allied Converters and frequently copies me on emails that address various issues associated with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). I have published other articles by Ellenbogen including a description of his keynote address to the Business Council of New York 2023 Renewable Energy Conference Energy titled: “Energy on Demand as the Life Blood of Business and Entrepreneurship in the State -video here:  Why NY State Must Rethink Its Energy Plan and Ten Suggestions to Help Fix the Problems” and another video presentation he developed describing problems with Climate Act implementation.   He comes to the table as an engineer who truly cares about the environment and as an early adopter of renewable technologies going back to the 1990’s at both his home and business two decades ago.

Solar Inverter Resiliency Issue

Joanne Nova recently identified a major issue with Behind-the-Meter (BTM) solar. The article discusses the fact that all new solar inverters are internet connected and many of them are made in China. Last October it was found that they may have communication vulnerabilities where they could be turned off simultaneously.  She writes:

What if a few gigawatts of solar power disappeared without a warning or a cloud in the sky?

Imagine a hostile force had control of half your national power generation at lunchtime and could just flip a switch to bring you to your knees? Or how about a crime syndicate wanting a ransom paid by 5 pm?

Her article goes on to describe the problem in more detail.  Nova quotes Daniel Croft, CyberDaily (October 2023):

Cyber Security CRC chief executive Rachael Falk said… that an attack on the solar grid could spark a “black start” event, which could result in the entire power grid going down. … “This could bring down an entire power grid, and it could take a week to recover,” she said.

It turns out that security vulnerabilities have been identified in the Netherlands and the US.  In Australia half of the grid power can come from solar panels at noon.  As a result, Nova suggests that the solution is to test and possibly replace inverters and fix the software.

Ellenbogen recently distributed an email addressing this issue that is quoted below.  His solar panels have inverters too.  He writes:

This is something that hadn’t occurred to me as my inverters were older and only the power monitor was web connected.  I recently replaced the inverters at my house and those are web connected but everything is behind a firewall.  The inverters are also, in theory, American made.  It did occur to me when I was purchasing thermostats for the factory.  I will not buy a NEST or Honeywell internet connected thermostat because they all can be centrally controlled.  A few years ago, all the NEST thermostats in the US went offline.  They said that it was a computer glitch in their system, but was it?  If you don’t remember it, don’t try to Search for it.  It’s as though they scrubbed the internet of the event.  Google owns NEST.   You can find more information with Yahoo.   I remember it vividly because it confirmed my worst fears of why I didn’t buy one in the first place.

Ellenbogen explains that this is a problem:

This is a huge issue as, according to the NYISO Gold Book (Table below), there will be 4560 Megawatts at, maximum output, of BTM solar in NY State as of next year and the state is becoming very reliant on it.  If a significant portion of that was shut down simultaneously on a hot day at solar noon, the system would find it extremely difficult to respond to maintain stability.  If more of the present generation fleet is retired, the NYISO would find it almost impossible to ramp up generation quickly enough to offset the drop in generation.  It would be the equivalent of removing the entire nuclear fleet and one-third of the hydro generation from the system in an instant.  

He continues:

While many of the panels may not have that vulnerability, in the future they might and there will be even less backup generation to offset that.  With renewable projects under extreme financial pressure, the easiest place to cut corners would be in cyber-security because it wouldn’t be noticed until something happened.  In light of the article, it could also be the most hazardous place to cut corners.

Ellenbogen summarized:

When I was speaking at the Pelham Picture House last November, someone got up and said that they were glad Indian Point closed because it was a target of a terror attack.  That was last decades terrorist technique.  The new danger is hackers, or even worse, state actors that have implanted ticking time bombs throughout our energy infrastructure.  This is not being paranoid.  The Dutch hacker got into 4 million solar arrays in 150 countries.

Conclusion

Ellenbogen concluded his note saying “The question now is, what are the ISO’s and regulators around the country going to do about it?

As far as I can tell the issues that might affect resiliency like this are not on the radar of the people in charge of the Climate Act transition.  I am sure staff are aware of the problem described but I am also sure that there is no mandate in New York to minimize this risk.  Christian’s claim that adopting more renewable energy will provide greater resiliency is an empty slogan.