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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

#31

Post by bilbo0s »

amelius wrote: post #13
dataflow wrote: post #4

> It’s also possible that the manufacturer gets hacked, and subsequently sends out attacker controlled and wrong software updates to the inverters, with possibly dire consequences. > There are also people that claim that the many Chinese companies managing our power panels for us might intentionally want to harm us. Who knows. Wait, seriously? The European power system relies on Chinese companies not messing it up re…

They already can by simply turning open some power mosfets in their fleet of EVs.

Yeah.

I'm not sure everyone is really thinking clearly here.

Don't get me wrong, they should get rid of this practice of cloud monitoring. A consumer should be able to access monitoring over the internet without an intermediary. They should, of course, be allowed to contract with an intermediary if that is their desire.

But the security argument?

Yeah, that ship has sailed. Total war, means total war. Your power grid, your internet, your communications, and your fossil fuel deliveries will all see material disruption. I wouldn't count on being able to stop those disruptions by banning a few web sites. (And frankly, during total war, those disruptions would be the least of your problems in any case.)

Best bet for places like Europe, China, the US and Russia is, just don't do total war with each other. If you choose to do it anyway, then you can see what you can expect from that in the documents filed under "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#32

Post by yetihehe »

lucianbr wrote: post #28
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…

What's the reasoning for not allowing both control paths, via cloud but also locally? So that people who can and want to, will use the local control.

Cheapness. It would require to be at least semi secure, application on phone would need to find those devices locally and it should be synchronized with cloud anyway, synchronization is error prone and we had problems with devices sometimes responding twice or very slowly through local interface (through cloud was much faster, no idea why, not our firmware). Also not enough people requesting that feature, most don't care and think that losing internet is not often enough to warrant worrying about this.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#33

Post by twoodfin »

Isn’t the right place to fix this at the junction between the plants and the grid? Regulate the grid utilities into a gateway role, and require all inverter control & telemetry traffic to pass through them.

This seems likely to be more fruitful than attempting to regulate 400 Chinese panel manufacturers.

What am I missing?

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#34

Post by WaitWaitWha »

Q: Are there no regulatory requirements for power plants of any kinds in EU, specially around cybersecurity?

I do not allow any system into my environments (at home and at work) that requires a third party data connection function.

There are way too many incidents where a provider, cloud or otherwise which required connection failed for various reasons.

(e.g., Cisco Spark Board, Xerox ConnectKey, Google Cloud Print, WeWork's Connected devices, Lattice Egnines, MS Groove Music Pass, Shyp, Adobe Business Catalyst, Samsara, Zune, FuelBand, Anki Vector Robot, Google Stadia, Pebble)

Despite this, I am very leery of regulating solar power specifically.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#35

Post by m463 »

dathos wrote: post #6

I live off-grid, power and water wise, and it really irked me that the monitoring coming with my inverter is only available online. Even when there is a network available the app will not work. I fixed this by getting a raspberry pi connected and reading it from there, but if I disconnect the inverter from the internet it will create a new network so now there is always an open network in the middle of nowhere with n…

why can't people just make stuff and sell it?

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#36

Post by Kon-Peki »

> Incidentally, why are all those panels centrally connected anyway? I’d like to know what my panels are doing, but you don’t need the internet for that.

This is because of the market for carbon credits. When you installed your PV panels, someone estimated how much electricity they would generate over the next 10-15 years. Tradable carbon credits were created based on that estimate and went into the marketplace. And for the next 10-15 years they have to verify that the electricity was actually generated, or else someone has to pay back some money. Did you read the fine print on your contract? It is probably you that has to pay it back. You didn't know that one of the "rebates" you got was actually a pre-payment for those credits?!? Should have read the fine print ;)

Oh yeah, BTW: that "rebate" was only your portion of the credits. The installer got some of it (and doesn't have to pay back anything), the person that filled out the paperwork you didn't know existed got some (and doesn't have to pay back anything)...

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#37

Post by afh1 »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #34

Q: Are there no regulatory requirements for power plants of any kinds in EU, specially around cybersecurity? I do not allow any system into my environments (at home and at work) that requires a third party data connection function. There are way too many incidents where a provider, cloud or otherwise which required connection failed for various reasons. (e.g., Cisco Spark Board, Xerox ConnectKey, Google Cloud Print,…

Smartphones don't count?

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#38

Post by WaitWaitWha »

afh1 wrote: post #37
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #34

Q: Are there no regulatory requirements for power plants of any kinds in EU, specially around cybersecurity? I do not allow any system into my environments (at home and at work) that requires a third party data connection function. There are way too many incidents where a provider, cloud or otherwise which required connection failed for various reasons. (e.g., Cisco Spark Board, Xerox ConnectKey, Google Cloud Print,…

Smartphones don't count?

Apologies, but do not understand the question.

Are you suggesting using smart phones should count in "not allowing it in"? Then yes, I try to where possible. I do not depend on a smart phone. All functionality that are operationally necessary can be done elsewhere without major delays or impact.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#39

Post by afh1 »

dataflow wrote: post #4

> It’s also possible that the manufacturer gets hacked, and subsequently sends out attacker controlled and wrong software updates to the inverters, with possibly dire consequences. > There are also people that claim that the many Chinese companies managing our power panels for us might intentionally want to harm us. Who knows. Wait, seriously? The European power system relies on Chinese companies not messing it up re…

Shutting off nuclear to rely on gas from Russia was not seen as an extreme continental security risk. This is nothing...

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#40

Post by bee_rider »

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…

Also administering a bunch of IOT systems is a pain. If something is an open source community project, ok, I’ll play. If somebody is selling a product they are responsible for making sure it works.
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