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The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

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Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#171

Post by foolfoolz »

ano-ther wrote: post #11

Eye opening for me. One of the arguments for renewable energy (besides emissions) has always been its potential for decentralizing power generation. Makes it more resilient, democratizes the means of production etc. This article shows that we inadvertently introduced new choke points. And of course the global security environment makes it more worrisome.

decentralized solar will never be able to provide power at scale. even the scale of 1 household. only homes with lots of land could afford the amount of panels needed. the average home will always need to consume power generated offsite

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#172

Post by verisimi »

1053r wrote: post #59
delroth wrote: post #51

> In the Netherlands alone, these solar panels generate a power output equivalent to at least 25 medium sized nuclear power plants. Since this didn't pass the smell test: the author is looking at nameplate capacity, which is a completely useless metric for variable electricity production sources (a solar panel in my sunless basement has the same nameplate capacity as the same panel installed in the Sahara desert). Lo…

For the purposes of information security, the nameplate capacity is the correct number to consider for a very simple reason: we must defend as if hackers will pick the absolute worst moment to attack the grid. That is the moment when the sun is shining and it's absolutely cloudless across Netherlands, California, Germany, or wherever their target grid is. At that moment, the attacker will not only blast the grid with…

Tldr; We can't talk about proper numbers cos hackers.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#173

Post by verisimi »

delroth wrote: post #51

> In the Netherlands alone, these solar panels generate a power output equivalent to at least 25 medium sized nuclear power plants. Since this didn't pass the smell test: the author is looking at nameplate capacity, which is a completely useless metric for variable electricity production sources (a solar panel in my sunless basement has the same nameplate capacity as the same panel installed in the Sahara desert). Lo…

Not only that, solar is entirely misaligned with power requirements. Over the year it may be 1.5 over nuclear, but in the winter, when demand is highest, the amount of energy provided will be far less, on account of short days and low light - typically you get 1/10 of the energy in winter that you do in comparison to a summer day. So overproduction when unrequired, underproduction when required.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#174

Post by g_p »

applied_heat wrote: post #169
shermantanktop wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the rest of the tech industry, what you did to get your diploma gives you about 18 months of momentum. If you haven’t learned multiple new technologies by that point, you’re in trouble. Success in this industry means perpetually redeveloping your own skills, and liking it. How someone would wave a 20 year old piece of paper as evidence that they know how to use solar tech that was developed last year, I don’t know…

I mean, electrical engineering teaches you a lot of the math,physics,and control systems theory, and power systems that guides the design and operating characteristic of power systems devices like inverters. Sure EE doesn’t help with cybersecurity per se, but inverters and solar panels existed 20 years ago so I feel like my 20 year old electrical engineering degree is pretty darn relevant

It certainly does - if you remain current then not a lot has really changed.

If you understand the principles of control systems and how an electrical grid works, this is broadly "just" a grid stability concern.

To some extent this feels like an issue of IoT-ification of things that we otherwise understood just fine! Maybe the real issue is how we blend cyber security knowledge into other sectors, and quantify and ensure it is present?

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#175

Post by crabmusket »

yetihehe wrote: post #5

>The owner of the panels and inverters can meanwhile establish a connection with that manufacturer using an app or website, and via the manufacturer see how their own panels are doing > It wasn’t necessary from a technical standpoint to let everything run through the manufacturer’s servers, but it was chosen to do it this way. (emphasis from article) I'm working on IoT cloud system. It was chosen to be done this way…

I agree, and I wish it were otherwise. Why is it so difficult for me to have a home network where things can just work? Why is it a mess of configuration and self signed certificates? It seems like nobody is incentivised to provide this, because nobody providing me with devices, services, and so on lives in my house with me. They need my data and my control pathways to go via them, not to stay in my house.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#177

Post by outsomnia »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #142
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about the feasibility of modulating light onto a solar panel. I feel it would not be feasible, except possibly onto a single panel at a time over a long time period. Just a gut feeling based off radio stuff (GPS).

GPS can provide the coherent reference, if you mean transmitting signal (say sound) while the panel is illuminated by the sun theres youtube videos of people doing that, with a laser pointer, but in sunlight and without information theoretic justified modulation scheme. Nothing prevents the satellite to transmit the commands at night, if that feels more convincing to you. Ask yourself what is the active area of a pho…

This is just FUD.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#178

Post by preisschild »

cesarb wrote: post #77
delroth wrote: post #51

> In the Netherlands alone, these solar panels generate a power output equivalent to at least 25 medium sized nuclear power plants. Since this didn't pass the smell test: the author is looking at nameplate capacity, which is a completely useless metric for variable electricity production sources (a solar panel in my sunless basement has the same nameplate capacity as the same panel installed in the Sahara desert). Lo…

> the author is looking at nameplate capacity, which is a completely useless metric for variable electricity production sources For solar panels, the nameplate capacity is usually also the power generated at the peak production time, which is the moment when an attacker turning off all inverters at the same time would have the most impact. That is: for an attack (or any other failure), the most important metric is no…

No. You will definitely not get peak capacity even in the sahara. They got those numbers under perfect conditions in a laboratory, not under real circumstances.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#179

Post by kortilla »

msandford wrote: post #135
tivert wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting the grid back online is a laboreous manual process which will take (a lot of) time. Think... It would be even more laborious and take more time to bring things back online if the attacker manages to damage or destroy equipment with an overload like the GP describes.

The "turning the grid up to 11" attack isn't really possible. I know it seems like it is, but the inverters will only advance frequency so much before they back off, the inverters will only increase voltage so much. Etc. Sounds scary, isn't practical. Turning everything off when the panels are at peak output? That lets frequency sag enough that plants start tripping offline to protect themselves and the grid and it'l…

Months isn’t correct. Unless there was damage it could be recovered within a day.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#180

Post by USiBqidmOOkAqRb »

yetihehe wrote: post #5

>The owner of the panels and inverters can meanwhile establish a connection with that manufacturer using an app or website, and via the manufacturer see how their own panels are doing > It wasn’t necessary from a technical standpoint to let everything run through the manufacturer’s servers, but it was chosen to do it this way. (emphasis from article) I'm working on IoT cloud system. It was chosen to be done this way…

>they want their panels to be accessible when they are outside their home

I call bullshit. They've been conditioned to think that they want it, because all product brochures have it.

What kind of tangible benefit could there be to know how bright the sun is at your home while you're not there? A cool party trick to virtue signal or a break between doomscrolling, I suppose, but it's not like you're gonna jump up and drive back to... what even could you do if you knew?

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