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Every solar panel and battery connected to the U.S. energy grid relies on a device few people ever consider: the power inverter. In May of 2025, U.S. experts found undocumented communication modules and secret radios embedded in some Chinese-manufactured solar inverters and battery systems.
U.S. officials have discovered undisclosed communication devices on the power inverters of some Chinese-manufactured solar panels, Reuters reported today based on anonymous sources within the federal government. The inverters are part of the hardware package connecting solar arrays to the power grid.
This investigative article exposes the discovery of undocumented communication devices hidden in Chinese-made solar inverters, creating unprecedented vulnerabilities in global power grids.
In a discovery that has sent shockwaves through the cybersecurity community, U.S. energy officials have found undocumented "rogue" communication devices hidden inside solar power inverters imported from China.
The benchmarks are bottom-up cost estimates of all major inputs to typical PV and energy storage system configurations and installation practices. Bottom-up costs are based on national averages and do not necessarily represent typical costs in all local markets.
For instance, many residential customers finance their PV systems, but the benchmarks exclude financing costs, which can represent around 20% of reported market prices. For further research on the complexity of PV markets and reported market prices, see Gillingham et al. (2016) and Barbose et al. (2021a).
Co-locating the PV and storage subsystems produces cost savings by reducing costs related to site preparation, permitting and interconnection, installation labor, hardware (via sharing of hardware such as switchgears, transformers, and controls), overhead, and profit.
Commercial Li-ion Energy Storage System: Modeled Cost Parameters in Intrinsic Units Min. state of charge (SOC) and max. SOC a Note that, for all values given in per square meter (m2) terms, the denominator refers to square meters of battery pack footprint. The representative system has 80 kWh/m2.
These benchmarks help measure progress toward goals for reducing solar electricity costs and guide SETO research and development programs. Read more to find out how these cost benchmarks are modeled and download the data and cost modeling program below.
DC/DC converter for battery: The total initial cost of the studied DC microgrid is:14;511$. As it can be seen from the result, for a DC microgridwith the same system specification as the AC microgrid, theinitial cost is lower.
The current MSP benchmarks for PV systems in 2022 real USD are $28.78/kWdc/yr (residential), $39.83/kWdc/yr (community solar), and $16.12/kWdc/yr (utility-scale, single-axis tracking). For MMP, the current benchmarks are $30.36/kWdc/yr (residential), $40.51/kWdc/yr (community solar), and $16.58/kWdc/yr (utility-scale, single-axis tracking).
The MMP results are $30.36 (residential), $40.51 (community solar), and $16.58 (utility-scale). The community solar O&M cost is higher than the O&M cost for a single-customer commercial PV system of similar configuration because of the community solar subscriber management cost, which accounts for about 40% of the total community solar O&M cost.
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