Flaws In Popular Solar Power Management Platform Could Crash the Grid

mask.of.sanity (1228908) writes "Criminals could potentially cause black-outs and mess with power grid configurations by exploiting flaws in a popular solar panel management system used by thousands of homes and businesses. The threat is substantial because, as the company boasts, its eponymous management system runs globally on roughly 229,300 solar plants that typically pump out 566TWh of electrical energy."

Comments

Unit

[bluefoxlucid]

556TWh is a cumulative unit. It's not an average output. If it's over an hour, that's 556TW; if it's over 1000 hours, that's 556GW.

Re:Unit

[Mr D from 63]

As far as the US is concerned; Since in 2013 solar only accounted for less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the electrical generation (that includes commercial and residential), and since they are variable supplies to start with that depend on the rest of the grid to be useful, I wouldn't worry too much about them crashing the grid.

Re:Unit

[Guspaz]

less than 1/2 of 1 percent

One might even say less than half a percent.

Wrong by 5 orders of magnitude

[Doub]

Original article has two flaws with the number you quote. It's not 566TWh, it's 5.66TWh (that's the value advertised for yesterday as total energy), that's 2 orders of magnitude. And it's not "typically" since it's the accumulated value over the service lifetime. If you want to quote a typical value, you quote current power (in W, not Wh) and the website advertise it as 6.74 GWp (p for peak, the bullshit suffix used by the solar panel industry (should be 6.74 GWbs IMHO), so the actual value is even less), that's another 3 order of magnitude. I guess the actual numbers are less impressive...

Re:Wrong by 5 orders of magnitude

[mspohr]

The output of solar panels varies from zero (at night) to some peak value (when the sun is hitting them just right). Most solar installations generate significant power for about 5 hours a day. When describing solar installations, the peak output is useful for understanding the size of the installation and what can be expected in power output. Everyone knows that the peak is not the average, etc.
Solar power is very quiet, just like the Library of Congress.

To be fair ...

[quietwalker]

Squirrels could potentially cause black-outs and mess with power grid configurations. In fact, they have.

Sounds like a solar FUD piece

[Mad Quacker]

Solar power is still just a tiny tiny fraction of total energy output, yet hackers can cause massive blackouts? If only they knew how to hack the SCADA systems that run traditional power plants :rollseyes:

Re:Sounds like a solar FUD piece

[fustakrakich]

It's a giant FUD piece. It looks like someone is trying to limit solar for all the obvious reasons with legislation. The backlash against solar has already started with the electric companies tacking on all those extra fees onto people who install solar panels. Self sufficiency is an anathema to big business

Simple solution

[TVmisGuided]

Why not just keep the management system OFF the network? Make it local-only?

Just because something CAN be hooked to the Internet, it doesn't necessarily follow that it SHOULD be hooked to the Internet.

Just my 2p worth. Save up the change for a cup of coffee or something.

Bad Slashdot Editing

[Daetrin]

I'm not sure if it was the person who submitted the article or if samzenpus decided to condense things, but the quote is straight from the article, except for removing one sentence from the middle:

"Details of how the attacks could be executed were kept under wraps while solar panel monitoring kit vendor Solar-Log distributed a patch for the flaws."

Which wouldn't be that big a deal, except that the part included in the Slashdot blurb refers to the "eponymous management system", which makes absolutely no sense if you don't include the name of the software/company.