The European Commission has blocked, effective from next November 1, funds for imports of Chinese inverters for security reasons: it fears that these electronic devices – essential for connecting solar panels and wind turbines to the power grid – could be exploited by Beijing to steal sensitive data or to disable energy plants and cause blackouts.
WHAT INVERTERS DO AND WHAT THE AMERICANS DISCOVERED
China is the largest producer in the world of inverters, the “boxes” tasked with converting current and varying the frequency of the energy output of photovoltaic panels to align it with the values required by the electrical system. Already a year ago, U.S. authorities had found suspicious communication devices, i.e. not reported in the technical documentation, inside some Chinese-made inverters.
THE WORDS OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
To justify the fund block, Siobhan McGarry, a spokesperson for the European Commission, explained that foreign actors could exploit inverters to manipulate the Union’s energy grids and gain “unauthorized access to operational data. In practice,” she added, “this could result in the remote shutdown of member states’ grids, causing nationwide blackouts. Given the severity of these threats, the Commission is taking action.”
CAN WE DO WITHOUT CHINESE INVERTERS?
China is not only the largest producer of solar cells and panels but also of inverters: it controls more than half of the global market for these devices and the European Union is dependent on them. According to the European Solar Manufacturing Council, an industry association, over 200 gigawatts of solar energy production capacity at the community level are linked to inverters made in China.
The largest inverter manufacturers are Huawei and Sungrow. European countries could turn to alternative suppliers in Japan and South Korea, but this would increase the costs of photovoltaic projects. However, according to the European Commission, this would be a minimal increase: less than 2 percent, also considering that inverters account for 5 percent of the total cost of large-scale solar installations (utility-scale).
ARE CHINESE WIND TURBINES ALSO A SECURITY THREAT?
In March, the UK government said that wind turbines from the Chinese company Ming Yang – one of the largest in the world in this sector – pose a national security risk and consequently will not support their use in offshore plants.
Already the German Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies, in a report commissioned by the German Ministry of Defense, considered Ming Yang risky. The document explained that China could use its own wind generators as a means of economic pressure (deliberately slowing the development of energy projects), as a weapon (remotely disabling plants to hit a country’s electricity generation), or as a spying tool (through the collection of sensitive data via turbine control software).
Ming Yang’s devices are also present in Italy and the company collaborates on several projects in Apulia and Sicily with Renexia, a renewable energy company controlled by the Toto group.
