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The "theory" is that they'd shut off multiple big solar farms during peak, to damage the grid. But it's literally just propaganda.

The personal-use solar inverters that let you check power generation from your phone, let you turn them off from your phone as well. And some people and groups have tried to shift that narrative to "ermegerd remote killswitches in industrial scale inverters". But those aren't hooked up to the internet and they're usually in grounded metal boxes. You can't easily get an outside signal to them.

Not an option. They have to be connected to something, the grid has to be able to monitor and coordinate power plants of any kind remotely and for a solar power plant the inverters are where a lot of that logic happens. Obviously it's not going to have a public IP accessible to the whole internet, it may not even be connecting across the public internet at all but at the very least there are data collection and monitoring networks woven throughout the entire country and there are all sorts of ways anyone with nation-state level resources, nevermind China who manufactures and supplies so much of the world's technology, might gain access to them.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-machine-rogue-communication-devices-found-chinese-inverters-2025-05-14/

If you know they are there then manage the network and environment to limit the risk.

What's being discussed here are undocumented network connections that were wired to the primary controls through a secondary data bus so that standard monitoring tools wouldn't see the traffic.

Even if it isn't malicious it's terrible, no-good, shitty design work.

https://cybersecuritynews.com/u-s-officials-investigating-rogue-communication-devices/

Yeah, the one in my car was on the old AT&T GSM network. I'm pretty sure there's no network left for it to talk to, but I'd still like to find the component and wrap it in aluminum foil. The car's been paid off for 6 years, and OTA services cut off a couple years after that. There's no legitimate (from my perspective) reason for anyone but me to be able to talk to my car.

Hopefully someone finds the kill switch for ads and flips it

Source on this?

Not that I don't believe you, fuck Microsoft with an umbrella as far as I'm concerned, but that's the kind of claim you want to support with a source

Oh well that makes it okay then.

Nobody in their same mind uses Microsoft software for anything more important than solitaire.

I’m calling shenanigans on the reports until they name some names.

I wouldn’t put it past any government to do such things, but drastic action like halting the rollout of solar demands some serious proof. I also wouldn’t put it past any government to just make stuff up to further their agenda.

In the case of this administration, Don’t Trust, Do Verify.

If you find such a tear down, I would love to know. But I think it wise to remain sceptical without solid proof.

It is. Sorry for the run around, but rules is rules.