Hackers could plunge Britain into darkness in less than two minutes, report warns

New modelling puts the chance of a major cyberattack on Britain’s battery storage network within five years at 92 per cent, warning that a coordinated strike could trigger a nationwide blackout affecting 67 million people and cause up to £10bn in damage

Hackers could plunge Britain into darkness in less than two minutes by targeting the battery storage systems becoming increasingly critical to the stability of the electricity grid, according to new risk modelling.

A new analysis puts the chance of a major cyberattack on the country’s battery storage infrastructure within the next five years at 92 per cent if current industry-average security practices continue.

It found that compromising around 29 per cent of national battery capacity – equivalent to roughly 400 units – could be enough to destabilise the grid and trigger a nationwide blackout affecting about 67 million people, with the cost of a single major attack estimated at between £2bn and £10bn.

The figures come from 10,000 simulations carried out by energy risk specialist Centrii under three different security scenarios and are modelled estimates rather than predictions based on known attacks.

Rafael Narezz, the firm’s chief executive, said: “A coordinated attack does not need to stop generation to cause a blackout. It only needs to desynchronise the balancing layer, forcing batteries to charge or discharge together, or delaying how they respond to grid signals.”

He added: “The effect is closer to a distributed denial-of-service attack than a conventional outage – instead of overwhelming a website with traffic, it overwhelms the grid’s ability to stay in balance, using energy itself as the disruptive force.

“The modelled result is a cascading blackout that unfolds in under two minutes.”

Battery storage is becoming a central part of Britain’s electricity system as more power comes from wind and solar.

Large-scale sites typically comprise multiple battery containers connected through inverters, transformers and switchgear to the electricity grid, allowing them to absorb electricity when supply is plentiful and release it during periods of higher demand.

The technology is also increasingly important to the day-to-day stability of the network, with grid-scale batteries able to respond rapidly to changes in supply and demand and help maintain the frequency of the electricity system as Britain becomes more dependent on weather-driven renewable generation.

The Government’s Clean Power 2030 plan estimates that Britain will need between 23GW and 27GW of battery capacity by the end of the decade, compared with 4.5GW in 2024, with most of the additional capacity expected to come from grid-scale installations.

Many modern battery storage systems rely on digital controls, while cloud-controlled systems can allow multiple batteries to be managed remotely as part of the balancing network.

Centrii’s modelling examines the risk of attackers exploiting those connections to make large numbers of batteries charge or discharge together, or delay their response to grid signals, creating a sudden imbalance capable of spreading disruption across the electricity system.

The study, GRIDLOCK: What a Coordinated Battery Attack Would Cost the Grid, found that stronger security could cut the five-year risk from 92 per cent to 78 per cent.

Mandatory cybersecurity certification and regular attack drills could further reduce the modelled risk to 61 per cent and move the earliest likely attack window from 2027–28 to 2029–31.

Centrii estimates that upgrading Britain’s battery fleet to that level of cybersecurity would cost between £400m and £1bn, compared with the £2bn to £10bn in damage it estimates could result from a serious attack.

Narezzi added: “Every board I speak to already accepts that cyber risk exists. What they haven’t had is a definitive assessment that helps them to reach the right figure.

“Security spending in operational technology is rarely treated as return-generating, because its value shows up in an event that does not happen. This modelling makes that value visible and measurable.

“Based on these figures, protecting battery storage is one of the highest-return decisions available anywhere in the business, but it’s also one of the least discussed at board level.”

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_{Main image: New modelling warns a coordinated cyberattack on Britain’s battery storage network could trigger a nationwide blackout in under two minutes. Credit: Matheus Natan via Pexels}