Because I need another thing to keep me up at night….
The Department of Homeland Security this week revealed that Russian hackers attacked our electrical grid last year and could have created electricity blackouts throughout the United States, thanks to our overreliance on a centralized grid.
You’d think we’d have taken the hint by now.
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But no. In Washington, the geniuses at the Department of Energy are still trying to figure out how to bailout economically untenable coal and nuclear plants.
Cool.
Newsweek reporter Jason Murdock has the terrifying details:
Hackers working for a state-sponsored cyber-espionage unit with alleged links to Russia could have caused electricity blackouts in the U.S. last year after gaining access to some utility control rooms, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official disclosed this week.
Jonathan Homer, chief of industrial control system analysis at the agency, said that hackers “got to the point where they could have thrown switches” and mess with power flows, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news from a federal briefing on Monday.
The best part of this whole story is that they didn’t throw the switches. The Russian hackers were just letting us know they could gain access to them any time they wanted and throw them should they decide to do it.
So the solution is…a more centralized grid?
Maybe this report will be the wake-up call the federal government needs to realize it’s time to take seriously electrical security and move to a distributed-generation grid. Heavily solar states are already moving in that direction, and as battery costs continue to plummet, you can expect the push for a decentralized grid to intensify.
But I’m not hopeful. After all, we have put people in charge of these agencies that seem to think Russian hacking is just something we have to live with and not something we need to combat vigorously. I just fear that next time, we won’t be able to escape unscathed.
What Happened: Since January 1, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has made moves that indicate it is considering wooing utilities to become part of its membership – a move that may be well-intentioned but are far more likely to be self-defeating.
SEIA President and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper told SolarWakeup last year that she was willing to talk to anyone (which apparently really does mean anyone) to expand the solar industry.
In the past few months, SEIA floated the idea of bringing on utilities as members of the association to some board members.
SEIA approached SEPA to acquire their ownership stake in the SPI production company, SETS, but instead renewed the joint venture .
SolarWakeup’s View: Sometimes, the enemies of your enemies are still your enemies, too.
While I have no doubt the intentions of Abigail Ross Hopper and the rest of the SEIA team are honorable, the idea of bringing utilities in as part of the national solar association makes me uneasy – and apparently I’m not the only one.
Since the beginning of the year, the subject of allowing utilities to become members of the association has come up. In one instance, the executive team met with resistance from the board when utility membership was discussed. Dan Whitten, the association’s vice president of communication, disputes that characterization of what happened at the meeting, though sources requesting to remain anonymous to discuss the plan freely outlined it as reported above.
“A range of options with regard to utilities was discussed at our most recent board meeting,” Whitten told SolarWakeup. “There was some pushback, and there was also interest in pursuing this further. The conversation is not over.”Likewise, recent negotiations surrounding the co-sponsorship of Solar Power International with the Smart Electric Power Alliance also came under discussion. Sources tell SolarWakeup that SEIA tried to buy out SEPA’s interest in the show but were rebuffed. An of the partnership was signed instead. SEPA, unlike SEIA, has investor-owned utilities on their board and takes in millions of profits from SPI and other shows produced by SETS (Solar Energy Trade Shows).
Whitten again disputes that characterization as well. “It was among a full range of options that we have batted around including renewal, the one we landed on,” he said.
An extension under the previous agreement should concern any SEIA member, however. After all, most of the revenues from the show come from SEIA members and members’ customers, but SEPA’s annual budget is more than 50% funded by the SETS joint venture. The bottom line? SEIA’s members – that’s you – fund an organization with close ties to the utilities that are trying to mess with your business. In other words, SEPA needs you more than the other way around, but it’s SEIA’s members that get hurt in the process.
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“There is no question that we are looking at all opportunities to better represent the full solar industry from local installers, to providers of advanced technologies, to large-scale solar providers and sponsors,” Whitten said. “We want a big tent, but we want to do it in a way that will keep the solar industry together. A solar industry divided is an industry with limited to no political power. [We want solar to become] one that can represent the entire $20 billion and growing industry can wield serious influence in Washington and in states.”
Look, I get it. For years – nay, decades – the national association has struggled to find ways to raise the necessary money to battle against a well-funded utility industry, a battle it knows it needs to fight. And I understand the temptation to go where the money is. After all, there is no question the utilities are well funded and have money to burn – just look at EEI and NEI. Look at all the cash they’re spending trying to dismantle net metering – maybe the most effective pro-solar-penetration legislative policy in history – and the money they get from charging exhorbitant fees for interconnection access.
But that’s just it, isn’t it? Can we ever trust the utilities to support the solar industry fully, given the threat it poses to most utilities’ monopoly power on electricity generation? Wouldn’t we essentially just be giving cover to a group that, if they don’t want to destroy the solar industry entirely, at the very least want to slow it down long enough for utilities to figure out how to keep the power of solar for themselves? What would that mean to SEIA’s position on ratepayer-funded solar within utilities’ monopoly markets?
But I’m a big believer in playing out the potential unintended consequences of any move before deciding on a final course of action. And the potentially devastating consequences of alliance between solar’s national association and groups hellbent on hobbling solar’s growth are bridge too far for me.
What Happened: Microsoft, in an interview with Greentech Media, explained why it was turning to approximately 60 MW of distributed solar to power its data centers in Singapore. Essentially:
The company said it had been burned before when it tried to build utility-scale solar projects in other countries, thanks to permitting issues and other local constrictions.
The limited land in Singapore to build a large-scale solar plant left them with one option that the city-state has in abundance: rooftop space.
Singapore’s skyline will have more rooftop distributed solar to power Microsoft’s data centers in the city-state.
SolarWakeup’s View: Microsoft, which doesn’t even appear on the Top 10 Businesses for solar in the United States, has decided to make a splash in Singapore by commissioning 60 MW of rooftop solar to power its data centers, Greentech Media reports.
Why distributed solar instead of the typical utility-scale solar plants it would fund? Well, the answer to that is simple – there’s just not enough land to do it properly.
After all, the city-state is only 277 square miles, total. And what land area it does have is densely packed with skyscrapers. Even if it wanted to do so, Microsoft would find it difficult to find enough open land to build a solar farm big enough to keep up with their data centers’ rapacious demand for energy.
Secondly, with distributed solar on the rooftops of downtown buildings, Microsoft runs less risk of the entire project going belly-up as they have seen in other countries in which they do business. This gives the massive software conglomerate the ability to control its own electrical future.
Microsoft’s solution to its land problem should hearten U.S. business that want to go solar but don’t feel as if they could find the space to build a solar project big enough to power their operations. New York City is already figuring this out, and maybe Microsoft can set the example other large corporations in the United States can follow to make their own solar dreams come true.
The solar industry is packed with some of the greatest innovators and entrepreneus in the Country. At times, however, we let some of the downturn of the sector get to us and we don’t always help each other as much as we could. Take a moment and help someone today, make an intro, help someone get into a door or sign a petition. Working together, we will strengthen the industry for everyone.
