Europe’s growing fleet of internet-connected solar installations creates potential routes into electricity generation through inverter platforms, local networks, installers, maintenance providers and aggregators. A compromise that reaches many devices—or lets an attacker change enough generation at once—could contribute to grid imbalance, congestion or voltage problems. These are assessed scenarios, not evidence of a renewable-energy cyberattack causing a European blackout: the sources discussed here do not establish that such a blackout has occurred.
The most detailed current assessment is the Smart Energy Expert Group’s cybersecurity report on photovoltaic (PV) generation, Version 1.1, dated 1 October 2026. It is an expert-group assessment based primarily on expert judgment, not an incident investigation or a measured probability study; the report says it is not exhaustive and does not represent the European Commission’s opinion.
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Why does renewable growth create a larger cyber exposure?
Solar generation has expanded rapidly in the EU. The Smart Energy Expert Group report reproduces SolarPower Europe’s 2025 outlook figures: installed PV generation of 86 GW in 2015 and 406 GW in 2025, with 718 GWdc projected for 2030. The 2030 figure is a projection, not installed capacity. None of these numbers measures cyber incidents or means that all capacity is equally exposed.
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The risk comes partly from how connected generation is managed. Inverters and related systems can exchange telemetry, settings and firmware updates with manufacturer platforms. Installers and maintenance providers may also have access, while aggregators can coordinate many installations. Those connections make remote operation and maintenance possible, but create pathways that can be abused if an account, system, supplier or network is compromised.
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PV installations also vary greatly in scale and operation. The report uses these size bands for analysis, while cautioning that capacity alone is an imperfect proxy for actual use case, risk or applicable regulation:
- Plug-in residential: below 0.8 kW.
- Residential: 0.8 to 10 kW.
- Commercial and industrial: 10 kW to 1 MW.
- Utility-scale: above 1 MW.
A small installation and a large power plant do not present identical risks. A shared platform serving many smaller systems could create a concentration risk, while access to a utility-scale site could expose a larger block of generation directly. Ownership, remote-access arrangements, aggregation and third-party access matter alongside capacity.
How could an attacker reach PV generation?
The 2026 expert-group assessment identifies several routes associated with parties or systems that can access inverters. Its executive summary rates three scenarios as high risk. These ratings reflect the experts’ assessment; they are not incident counts, measured likelihoods or an official Commission finding.
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- Manufacturer platforms: A platform used to monitor, configure or update inverters may connect to substantial capacity. A compromise could therefore have a wider reach than an attack on one device. The report rates attacks against manufacturer platforms as high risk, particularly for residential and commercial/industrial installations.
- Intentional backdoors: A deliberately inserted backdoor in a platform, inverter hardware or firmware could create a route to control or disrupt installations. The report rates this scenario as high risk across the use cases it considers.
- Local networks and remote access: At a utility-scale site, an attacker who reaches the local network and then a remote-access firewall could gain a route toward operational equipment. The report rates this scenario as high risk.
- Installers and maintenance providers: Third parties may need access to configure, service or update systems. Their accounts, devices and procedures can become part of the security boundary.
- Aggregators: A service coordinating multiple installations can concentrate access or control. The potential reach depends on what the service can actually change and how its access is secured.
These are plausible pathways described in an assessment, not a claim that each has been used in a documented attack on European renewables. The report focuses on malicious cyberattacks and impacts on the electricity system. It does not assess accidental programming or firmware-update failures, nor does it analyze attackers using PV installations as a route into transmission-system or distribution-system operator networks.
What could an attack do to the electricity system?
The potential impact depends on how much generation an attacker can control, how quickly it can be changed, and the grid conditions at the time. The expert group describes scenarios in which simultaneous changes to PV output could create a supply-demand imbalance. If reserves could not compensate, frequency could move outside the permitted range and operators might need to disconnect load or generation.
Other possible effects include overloaded grid equipment causing congestion and voltage problems. Operators could need to shut down part of the grid to maintain safe operation. A widespread outage is discussed as a worst-case possibility, not a prediction or a reported outcome.
The assessment is not a complete account of possible harm: it says electrical safety and equipment damage deserve further analysis. Its scenarios should not be read as evidence that renewable installations have already caused a European blackout through cyberattack.
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The European Commission’s 24 July 2024 electricity and telecommunications risk assessment identified supply-chain risk as a main concern in both sectors, particularly for renewable-energy infrastructure and 5G rollout. It also highlighted ransomware, data wipers and zero-day vulnerabilities as pressing concerns where operational technology (OT) is involved. For electricity specifically, it identified malicious insiders as the most critical risk in its evaluation, citing personnel-vetting and talent challenges.
ENISA’s figures provide context about energy and cyber threats, but they do not measure attacks specifically targeting solar or wind installations:
- 3.27% of all recorded events: ENISA’s NIS360 report, published in February 2025, says energy accounted for this share during the reporting period associated with ENISA’s 2024 Threat Landscape. DDoS and ransomware were among the common threats. This is an energy-sector share of recorded events, not a renewable-specific rate.
- 10% of CIRAS incidents in 2023: ENISA NIS360 says energy represented this share of incidents reported on the CIRAS platform in 2023; 36% of those energy incidents were attributed to malicious activity. This is a separate dataset and period from the recorded-events figure above.
- 4,875 incidents: ENISA’s Threat Landscape 2025 analyzed this many incidents observed from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025. Its page was revised on 22 September 2026 to correct figures and links. This is broad EU threat-landscape evidence, not a count of attacks on renewable installations.
The European Commission’s 2025 energy-system assessment says it is difficult to measure vulnerability to cyberattacks across EU energy because official EU-level energy statistics are lacking. The available figures therefore cannot establish how often renewables are attacked or how their incident rate compares with other energy assets.
In a 20 June 2024 announcement, then-European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said: “In 2023 alone, more than 200 reported cyber incidents targeted the energy sector, and more than half of them were directed specifically against Europe.” This is an energy-sector figure, not a renewables-only count. The same announcement described Cyber Europe, an exercise that brought together 30 national cybersecurity agencies and more than 1,000 experts to test coordination and crisis management in a large-scale energy cyberattack scenario. An exercise tests preparedness; it does not show that the scenario happened.
What protections does the 2026 PV assessment recommend?
The Smart Energy Expert Group report recommends controls that address both shared services and individual sites. These are recommendations from the expert group, not automatically mandatory duties for every PV operator. Operators should check applicable law, contracts and local grid requirements.
Secure platforms and manage vulnerabilities
- Manufacturers should maintain robust vulnerability-handling processes for cloud platforms and set clear, enforceable patching timelines.
- The report encourages bug-bounty programs as one way to identify vulnerabilities.
- Operators should account for the security of manufacturer platforms that can view telemetry, alter settings or deliver firmware, especially where one service connects to many installations.
Limit communications at utility-scale sites
For utility-scale installations, the report recommends documenting, encrypting and authenticating inverter communications. It also recommends limiting outbound connections to whitelisted servers under EU or equivalent jurisdiction and allowing no inbound communications from outside the local network. These measures are aimed at reducing unnecessary routes between inverter equipment and external systems.
Control suppliers and firmware changes
- Restrict components or software from suppliers assessed as presenting significant cybersecurity risks.
- For commercial, industrial and utility-scale installations, replace manufacturer-triggered automatic firmware updates with controlled manual updates by qualified maintenance providers, as recommended in the report.
- Make update decisions through a managed process that accounts for who is authorized to approve and perform changes.
Include PV in electricity-system planning
The expert group recommends adding PV attack scenarios to electricity-system risk assessments. That helps planners consider whether simultaneous generation changes, site access or shared-platform compromise could create operational problems under specific grid conditions.
Which EU rules are relevant?
EU policy addresses cybersecurity through sector-specific and horizontal instruments, but the rules do not apply identically to every PV installation or actor. The Commission says the electricity-sector cybersecurity network code, Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1366, covers cyber aspects of cross-border electricity flows, including common minimum requirements, planning, monitoring, reporting and crisis management.
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The broader framework includes the NIS2 Directive (EU) 2022/2555 and the Critical Entities Resilience Directive (EU) 2022/2557. In its legal-gap analysis, the expert group concludes that NIS2 and the network code meaningfully cover utility-scale producers and aggregators, while other use cases and risks have gaps. It proposes possible changes involving standards, thresholds, supplier rules and installer qualifications. These proposed changes are recommendations, not enacted law merely because they appear in the report. Operators need to determine which obligations apply to their role, size, services and jurisdiction.
The Commission also notes structural challenges for energy security: some real-time systems cannot tolerate security measures that introduce unacceptable delay; interconnected electricity networks can transmit disruption across borders; and legacy systems must work alongside modern automation, smart meters and internet-connected devices. Security measures therefore need to protect access and integrity without compromising safe, reliable grid operation.
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