Cyber Security Threats on Wind Turbines with Everpoint Services and Idaho National Laboratory

Candace Wood, COO of Everpoint Services, along with Michael McCarty
and Megan Culler from Idaho National Lab, discuss their
collaboration at Little Pringle Wind Farm to conduct cybersecurity
research and testing. The episode delves into the critical
importance of addressing cybersecurity vulnerabilities in wind
energy infrastructure to ensure grid resiliency and energy
security. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update
on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored
by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy
Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel
Saxum. This podcast has an interesting story behind it. Our first
guest today is Candace Wood, Chief Operating Officer at Everpoint
Services, which is based in Texas. Candace purchased the Little
Pringle Wind Farm at an auction. Little Pringle Wind Farm is
outside of Texas. Amarillo, Texas, and buying a wind farm at
auction doesn't happen very often. And this is where the story
takes an interesting turn. Candace and Everpoint made a decision
about how to use this wind farm. Everpoint connected with the Idaho
National Laboratory, cybersecurity experts, to use a portion of the
turbines for cybersecurity. Research and testing. So from the Idaho
National Lab is Michael McCarty, who is a cybersecurity research
specialist and Megan Culler, who is a power engineer specializing
in cybersecurity and resiliency, also from the Idaho National
Laboratory. Megan, Michael, and Candice, welcome to the show.
Candace Wood: Thank you. Thanks for having us. Michael McCarty:
Thank you. Allen Hall: Alright, so let's start off with a little
prequel and figure out how Candace ended up buying a wind farm. So
you were at an auction Candace? Can you describe what happened
where you decided to put down some money on a wind farm? Candace
Wood: Everpoint Services, we are a end of life services company for
renewables. So we primarily focus on decommissioning and demolition
of wind turbines as well as solar assets. And we'd heard about this
wind farm that had been abandoned since about So I was at the
auction in August of 2017. Small farm, 10 units originally 2
megawatts each and heard that it was going up for auction. The
county had seized the asset to try and recover some back taxes. I
tuned into the option really with the intention of finding out who
was going to purchase it and then pitching our services to them.
Hey, we can come in and help you cut these things down. So I'm
listening to the auction and the price point is going once going
twice and I'm thinking gosh, that's Really not a lot of money. I
mean we're talking, five figures and I thought well, let me just
throw out a bid there and see what happens so I threw out a bid
that was just slightly above what was about to be the winning bid
and on behold I One, I bought the wind farm, so it was somewhat
impulsive decision, which was both terrifying and exciting. In the
immediate aftermath, what was interesting was once we looked into
it a little bit more, we discovered that the interconnection
agreement at the site was still in good standing. And once I
actually finally got out there to look at it, because I did
purchase the site unseen, I Never actually looked at it before.
Once we got out there and looked at it, I thought, these turbines,
they're not in such terrible condition, all things considered. And
so we started looking into, okay what could we do? Maybe did we
want to repower it? And that led us down the path of looking for
funding sources, which led us to the government a lending program
within the government. They say if you don't want to borrow 100
million or more, we really aren't interested. But we know these
guys over at Idaho National Labs who've been looking for a wind
farm to do some cyber security testing on. They might be interested
in what you have going on there. So that was how we ended up
getting linked up with Idaho National Labs. Allen Hall: Candace,
when you get to the site, you've taken a look at these wind
turbines. They are functional still? Candace Wood: No. Several
towers had blades that were broken off. One of the first. My 1st
order is a business was to actually get out there and clean up some
of the blade debris that had fallen down into the landowner's
fields so that they could plant in the spring. And no, it was not
functioning, but having a background in construction and when, I,
I. Climbed one of the towers and said the bolts seem to be holding
together pretty well. And the towers that had the blades on them,
seem to be mostly intact aside from a lot of dust. The other
primary issue was that, the copper pirates had gotten in there and
cut out most of the cabling, the voltage cabling. And so that was
the, that's the main hurdle and getting the site back up and
running. And so that's what we've been working with on is to secure
some funding so that we can actually go in rewire several of the
towers, get them back up and running so that they can try and pack
into them. Joel Saxum: My mind switches to a bunch of things,
right? So you stumbled upon this auction. The interconnection
agreement, unbeknownst to you at the time, is still in place.
Great, right? I'm thinking, man, could it be, could it be
repurposed? Could it be behind the meter green hydrogen? Could it
be, could we put energy back into the grid? However, to my
understanding, these are de wind turbines, right? Candace Wood:
They are a de wind, which is no longer in existence. Joel Saxum:
Yeah. And tough to, spare parts, anything's going to have to be
custom built. It's not like you just walk, it's not like it's a GE
one five and you call your neighbor wind farm and say Hey, do you
got some breaks or you got some bearings or apparently do you have
some medium voltage cabling that we can borrow? You guys don't have
that capability. Joining up with the Idaho national labs, that is
a, there's two really cool things about that to me. So it's someone
that they needed to have a project, right? They have something that
they want to do. They want to do something that will better the
wind industry as a whole. You have the assets. So it seems like
it's a a good, really good marriage of someone who needs something,
someone who has something right. So when you first engage with the
Idaho National Lab, how did that conversation go? Was it like, Hey,
we've have these things. What do you guys want to do? Or did you
guys have a plan in mind? And then it switched? Or how does that
process look like? Candace Wood: And maybe Michael can elaborate
more, but my understanding was they had tried to pursue this
project topic At a different wind farm asset site but ran into some
issues with the ownership. And as you can imagine, probably most
owner operators are not too keen to have somebody come in and try
and hack into their, functioning winter and so we were in a unique
position where, we own the site outright. We're not overly
concerned about running them because they're not currently running.
And so I think in our initial conversation, we both realized, hey
this might actually work. Joel Saxum: So Michael, then you guys get
engaged with Everpoint. You now have these assets, these 10
turbines. that are in various states of disrepair. We got to get
them up and running and stuff. But to so immediately you guys are
thinking, Hey, this is the project that we want to do, let's go and
attack it. So what is that project? What is it that you guys are
working on? Michael McCarty: So the project that we're working on
here, the Idaho national laboratory is. We're basically taking the
wind turbines and we're going to get them operational or, as close
to operational as we can. So the blade spin and that sort of thing,
maybe they're not producing energy at 100%, but we're going to get
them operational. And then we want to assess the whole security
stance the security posture of the wind turbine and see, you where
and how we could poke that to cause possible physical damage. A bit
similar to the Aurora experiment. If you're familiar with that, so
we want to see basically the places that cyber can interface with
the physical portions of the nacelle, the tower the inverter, if
there's an inverter, connecting back to the grid and. Then see can
we actually do that? And if we can do that, what sort of
mitigations could we put in place to Stop that from happening in
real life. Joel Saxum: So can you walk us through that Aurora
generator? I think it was a diesel generator test, right? Just so
that the listeners know what that is. Michael McCarty: Yeah, it's
So it's it's on the internet quite a bit. I think there's like a
Wikipedia page about it. But basically they, it was a destructive
test. So they wanted to see if the safety measures had been removed
from some electronic component in a large diesel generator what
would happen, would it smoke, would it blow up, would it catch
fire? And it pretty much did those things. So you remove the safety
measures, right? From the electronic components. And so when it's
supposed to fail and fail safe, it doesn't fail safe. It fails the
worst way possible because of specifically a cyber component. Megan
Culler: If I can add, I would just say that the, with that diesel
generator test, what they did was through digital means connected
and disconnected it from the grid rapidly.