Cybersecurity Market and Planning Support

NREL's cybersecurity market and planning support provides federal agencies and policymakers with tools and expertise to improve the cybersecurity posture of emerging energy systems that incorporate renewable and distributed energy resources.

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Projects

Report on Cybersecurity of Distribution Systems

NREL is leading the development of a report on the cybersecurity of distribution systems on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response.

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With support from the U.S. Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program, NREL has developed an in-depth tool for organizations with distributed energy resources to assess and improve their cybersecurity posture. The Distributed Energy Resource Cybersecurity Framework provides a holistic assessment for evaluating the cybersecurity posture of these systems—filling an important gap that expands on existing cybersecurity frameworks for more modern energy systems.

Through the Resilient Energy Platform and in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, NREL has developed Cybersecurity Building Blocks to help stakeholders improve security for the electrical grid. This effort grows out of discussions with utilities around the world as well as cybersecurity assessments performed by NREL on dozens of utilities and government agencies, with a focus on the cybersecurity challenges faced by small and under-resourced utilities.

Collaborations

Cybersecurity Standards Development for Distributed Energy Resources

In partnership with a team of national labs, NREL is leading the way to new cyber-inclusive standards and practices for renewable, distributed, and inverter-based energy resources. By securing a minimum level of performance for new devices, standards raise the baseline cybersecurity of our grid.

Wind Cybersecurity Industry Consortium

NREL and six leading industry organizations have developed the national Wind Cybersecurity Consortium to improve the cybersecurity of the U.S. wind fleet through collaborative analysis, development, and information-sharing. With support from U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response and its Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Wind Energy Technologies Office, the public-private partnership allows for the identification of industry-relevant use cases and the development of a platform to improve wind energy threat intelligence with NREL's world-class modeling and evaluation capabilities.

Publications

Power Sector Cybersecurity Building Blocks, NREL Technical Report (2021)

Distributed Energy Resource Cybersecurity Framework Best Practices, NREL Technical Report (2020)

Distributed Energy Resources Cybersecurity Framework: Applying the National Institute of Standards and Technology Risk Management Process, NREL Technical Report (2020)

Analysis of System and Interoperability Impact From Securing Communications for Distributed Energy Resources, IEEE Power and Energy Conference at Illinois (2019)

Certification Procedures for Data and Communications Security of Distributed Energy Resources, NREL Technical Report (2019)

Guide to the Distributed Energy Resources Cybersecurity Framework, NREL Technical Report (2019)

Partnerships

Our technologies and laboratory capabilities support our partners in securing their own operations and developing the next innovations in cybersecurity. Learn more about partnering with NREL.