Archived

Danish firms have found “suspicious” components added to east Asian circuit boards that were supposed to be built into the country’s green energy infrastructure, according to an industry body.

It has raised concerns about the potential for remote disruption of the power supply or digital espionage, coming a week after the US claimed to have identified “kill switches” in a consignment of solar panels and batteries from China.

[…]

Green Power Denmark, an umbrella group for 1,500 Danish renewable technology companies, said the components from “the East” had been found during routine checks on a “development project” that had at no point been connected to the grid.

“It’s a clear warning: threats to energy security can hide in plain sight,” the organisation said. “The real danger isn’t always sabotage. It can also be unlisted components. Hidden functions. That’s why Danish energy companies dismantle and inspect before anything goes live.”

Jorgen Christensen, Green Power Denmark’s technical director, said there was no proof of foul play and it was possible that the mysterious electronics had been included to add some kind of innocent function to the circuit boards.

“It’s possible the supplier had no malicious intent,” he told Reuters. “We can’t say at this point. But that doesn’t change the fact that these components shouldn’t be there.”

Walburga Hemetsberger, head of the lobby group SolarPower Europe, said the discovery was highly concerning and called for an investigation.

[…]

In recent years experts have issued increasingly strident warnings about the security risk posed by China’s stranglehold over the supply of many categories of renewable energy components in Europe, such as batteries, turbines and the inverters used to smooth the voltage of power as it is fed into the grid.

The large-scale blackout that occurred a fortnight ago across much of Spain and Portugal, both of which depend heavily on Chinese-made solar energy infrastructure, has further concentrated minds on the issue.

[…]