Enercon turbines disrupted by satellite cyber attack

As of 19 April, over 95% of the wind turbines affected by a massive satellite communication disruption had been reconnected to remote monitoring and maintenance by Enercon Service. “1217 wind farms are back online”, reported Enercon. Service teams in the central Europe region were said to be working “round the clock in a large-scale concerted action to rectify the problem”, which emerged on 24 February following a cyberattack on the KA-SAT satellite.

Communication services provided via the satellite went down at almost exactly the same time that Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Around 30 000 satellite terminals used by companies and organisations in a variety of sectors were affected across Europe. Among them 5800 Enercon wind turbines in central Europe with a total installed capacity of more than 10 GW. “The incident is suspected to have happened in connection with the Russian war of aggression”’ said Enercon, and can be regarded as collateral damage.

To restore communication, Enercon is replacing the hardware in the wind turbines damaged by the cyberattack and secured a large number of SAT modems to allow it to start the process of replacement quickly. Alternatively, other wind farms have restored communication by making use of LTE/mobile links.

Enercon notes that many wind farms do not have back up communications in place should faults arise with the existing SAT systems and says it is putting together LTE-based retrofit packages.

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