Can your solar panels help protect against a cyber attack? MIT thinks so

MIT researchers believe that solar panels and other clean energy equipment like EV chargers might just be a secret weapon for managing cyber attacks and extreme weather events in the future. 

According to a recent research paper, MIT engineers think your home solar panels could actually be part of a fail-safe solution during these types of incidents. As it exists now, the electric grid is vulnerable to cyber attacks and unpredictable weather, which threaten its resilience and the safety of people who rely on it for power.

The researchers say it’s possible that so-called local electricity markets—networks of equipment like solar panels, batteries, and smart thermostats that connect to the grid near homeowners and local businesses instead of a power plant—could stabilize the grid during unforeseen outages through coordinated efforts to send and reduce power as needed.

The solution proposed by the MIT engineers involves an algorithm that discerns trustworthy devices within local electricity markets. If the grid goes down, the algorithm would identify a combination of available grid-edge devices—including residential solar panel systems, battery storage systems, smart thermostats, and EV chargers—best suited to mitigate the power failure. 

The network of internet-of-things (IoT) devices (equipment capable of wirelessly connecting to the internet and exchanging data with other devices) would communicate to determine how to reduce demand and allocate power to the grid. The equipment owners would receive compensation for their participation. 

Essentially, if the grid experiences a cyberphysical attack and can’t produce power, your solar panel and battery systems could still send electricity to the grid and adjust your consumption to help support demand and mitigate power failure, similar to how net metering and demand response programs work. 

To prove their theory, the MIT team tested its Eureica (Efficient, Ultra-Resilient, IoT-Coordinated Assets) framework against multiple grid attacks and weather-related scenarios. It proved capable of stabilizing the grid every time, illustrating the idea that there is strength in numbers. On its own, your individual home solar panel system may not be enough to mitigate grid power failure, but when combined with your neighbors’ resources, you can achieve grid resiliency for everyone—which is no small feat.

MIT’s research paper offers an encouraging potential solution for grid outages, but it’s just the first step to achieving the intended outcome. The proposed framework assumes that many grid-edge devices will become IoT devices, which could take a while. While many modern solar panel systems and EV chargers come equipped with IoT technology, not all grid-edge devices have it built in yet.

Whether or not local electricity markets will be a viable option for implementing this IoT solution depends on customer adoption and government policy support. Without widespread residential participation, there won’t be enough grid-edge devices to rely on when the grid goes down. Favorable clean energy policies are also needed to support both participants and utilities in implementing local electricity markets.

A program like this may still be far from reality, but current storage adoption trends are promising. According to EnergySage’s 19th Solar & Storage Marketplace Report, 34% of homeowners purchasing solar through EnergySage also installed a battery in the first half of 2024—a record high. At the same time, battery prices dropped 16% year over year, reaching an all-time low. Given the critical role storage would play in MIT’s vision for local electricity markets, these real-life trends signal a step in the right direction.