UL has released a report, co-authored with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory that includes recommendations that enable distributed energy resources and inverter based resources to maintain a strong cybersecurity posture.

With support from DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office, UL will continue working with NREL on developing requirements to support cybersecurity certification standards for DERs and IBRs. NREL and UL are currently working on an Outline of Investigation for a standard that will apply to energy storage and generation technologies on the distribution grid, including photovoltaic inverters, electric vehicle chargers, wind turbines, fuel cells and other resources essential to advancing grid operations. These new requirements will prioritize cybersecurity enhancements for power systems dealing with high penetration inverter-based resources, including those interfacing with bulk power systems for periods of instantaneous high wind, solar and hybrid/storage generation. It will also help ensure cybersecurity is designed into new IBR and DER systems.

“Currently, there are no cybersecurity certification requirements to which manufacturers and vendors can certify their DER and IBR devices against an established and widely adopted cybersecurity certification program. The development of these new cybersecurity certification requirements will provide a single unified approach that can be taken as a reference for performing the testing and certification of DERs before being deployed and while in the field,” said Kenneth Boyce, senior director for Principal Engineering, Industrial, group at UL. “Drafting comprehensive certification requirements with peer review requires effective leadership and stakeholder participation. We are pleased to be working with NREL in this effort to bring additional performance-based security to electrical grid infrastructure.”

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