European producers of inverters, crucial components for connecting solar panels to the grid, are teaming up outside established European industry lobbying structures in a new challenge to China’s tightening grip on the supply chain.
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Solar panels, essentially a collection of wires and refined polysilicium, are generally considered too “dumb” to be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Not so the inverters, which are often vulnerable to easy access by ill-intentioned actors.
China dominates the solar panel supply chain, including the production of inverters, with 78% of the devices shipped to the EU coming from the world’s second-largest economy in 2023. This accounts for nine out of the 12 firms that dominate the EU market, potentially putting Beijing in a position to “significantly” affect the grid, according to a report by lobby group SolarPower Europe.
Now, Europe’s remaining inverter producers, including Austria’s Fronius, which recently quit SolarPower Europe over Huawei’s continued membership, have banded together in a bid to shore up their market – and, they say, the cybersecurity of Europe’s electricity grid.
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The Austrian firm is joined by Germany’s SMA, Spain’s Ingeteam and others to create a “resilient, competitive, and cyber-secure ecosystem of Western inverter, storage, and EMS [energy management system] manufacturers,” according to a statement shared with Euractiv. The initiative was facilitated by the Made-in-EU solar lobby group ESMC.
Inverters are a highly sensitive topic because their vulnerability to attack poses a credible risk to Europe’s electricity security.
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SolarPower Europe estimates that remote access to just 5 GW of solar panels through internet-connected inverters could, if abused, allow an actor or firm to “significantly” affect the grid. There are currently 13 manufacturers that could, in principle, commit such sabotage, the group suggests.
But the decision by inverter manufacturers to split from the main solar PV lobby has widened a divide with Europe’s solar sector.
On the one hand, SolarPower Europe represents Chinese manufacturers and developers who rely on their low-cost products. On the other, ESMC and the inverter producers argue for EU-based production and say the security benefits justify higher prices.
“Non-technical risk factors – such as governance structures, ownership, external influence, and the overall trustworthiness of entities – are as decisive for security as technical safeguards,” the new alliance says.
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This is needed! We have to take parts of the pv production back to Europe. But the parts that are included in the inverters need to be European made as well. First because it’s the right thing to do. Second because of the risks involved.
I read an article (from march 2025) about asian (read chinese) PCBs and why they are dangerous. The scary part was, that inside the layers of a PCB the manufacturer could hide parts like chips for espionage or fuses to short a circuit that are hard or impossible to detect:
In addition, specific manipulation scenarios are examined. The study demonstrates that it is technically possible to integrate additional components – such as spy chips – into the inner layers of multilayer PCBs. These often remain undetected even during X-ray examinations. Weaknesses in design, such as in the layout of capacities, can also be exploited to enable side-channel attacks. These are attacks that do not directly target algorithms or data, but exploit physical or logical side effects of a system. Attackers observe and analyse these side effects to extract protected information or algorithms.
Here is the article, but it’s in German: https://www.all-electronics.de/elektronik-fertigung/warum-asiatische-leiterplatten-so-guenstig-und-gefaehrlich-sind/725088
There have also been cases where communication equipment which was not part of the original design was found in Chinese solar power inverters: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-machine-rogue-communication-devices-found-chinese-inverters-2025-05-14/
So the inverter doesn’t necessarily need to be connected to the internet.
With such manipulated inverters I guess it could be possible to power down a good chunk of pv generators to destabilize the power grid. This could come in handy for China if they decide to take Taiwan (but this is just a very wild speculation from my part!).
Also disclaimer: this comment is partly recycled from a comment I made a month ago about a simmilar topic.
I installed an 24 kWp solar system on my residence this summer. Before I decided on a company I called in offers from 6 companies with the explicit wish that no Chinese or American compnents are used. Only one company took that wish seriously and actually made me an offer using only European made hardware, they were 16% more expensive than the cheapest offer but ultimately got my business. I specifically want to be able to have power in a crisis which is why I also got a large battery installed, all of that would be no good if some malicious state actor could just disable my system.
My inverter is actually from Fronius and the company had issues getting it online at first because the setup was relying on Microsoft Azure which is blocked on my network. We got it working by installing the initial firmware update locally though. Afterwards we disabled all remote control features and I firewalled everything so it can’t connect to the internet. The installer company will contact me if there are any important firmware updates but otherwise my system will stay offline.
+16% sounds not that bad.
Would have expected much more.
Absolute Gigachad
This is the way.
Fronius makes really great inverters. I also use the offline updater cause I don’t want or need their cloud.
Which company was it and where is it based?
Translation: We’re going to make it so that our slaves have to buy our products instead of products from different slave drivers, regardless who gives the better deal.
Businesses literally complain EU regulations and standards on workers rights (broadly) are “too high” and they can’t make all the money possible…
