DOE debuts SolarSnitch technology to boost cybersecurity in solar energy systems
The Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) recently unveiled a new technology developed by Sandia National Laboratories. Dubbed SolarSnitch, the solution is designed to enhance cybersecurity by safeguarding communications within photovoltaic (PV) systems in Distributed Energy Resources (DER) at the grid’s edge. It uses inspection tools to analyze cyber and physical data in PV smart inverters and custom machine learning (ML) algorithms to detect potential cyber attacks.
The SolarSnitch project is focused on developing the SolarSnitch system, which proactively detects and mitigates cybersecurity and cyber-physical threats in distributed energy resources like solar photovoltaics using machine learning techniques. The funding of US$490,000 for SolarSnitch, awarded by DOE’s CESER and the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), will help mature the technology and ready it for commercialization.
Over the next 24 months, project partners will be able to conduct ML-focused testing of the SolarSnitch solution within multiple real-world environments, enhancing its maturity, detection accuracy, and deployment readiness.
The ‘grid edge; sounds like a mysterious and potentially risky place, but it’s not necessarily so. The grid edge encompasses software, devices, and technologies owned by the customer, usually homeowners, businesses, or commercial facilities. DER are evolving quickly at the grid edge, and unless they are securely integrated into grid operations and management, they could impact grid reliability. Communicating with equipment and devices at the grid edge is becoming increasingly important as DER, like rooftop solar systems, rises in popularity.
SolarSnitch is one of 50 clean energy projects selected in the Fiscal Year 2024 Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) Base Annual Appropriations Core Laboratory Infrastructure for Market Readiness (CLIMR) lab call. These CLIMR lab call projects, coordinated by the DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions and funded by several DOE program offices, are dedicated to advancing technologies and strengthening existing practices to deliver clean energy solutions to the market.
Last month, the DOE Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator (CECA) program published a report focused on the efficacy of a tool intended to help thwart cyber incidents against the energy sector. The CECA program, which is charged with expediting the development and deployment of innovative cybersecurity solutions for renewable energy resources, is supported by DOE’s CESER and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
As part of the program’s second cohort, NREL researchers evaluated runZero, a cyber asset attack surface management product, to identify efficiencies and gaps in functionality and capabilities that will inform cybersecurity solutions for clean energy technology. The results show that runZero can successfully identify and scan devices on industrial control systems (ICS) networks without impeding their performance.
link
