A cyber security company has found that there is a 93% probability of a major attack on battery energy storage (BESS) infrastructure in the next five years.
The concern follows the Iranian-linked hacking of a small UK power plant last month. A single major attack on BESS is estimated to cost the country between £2 billion and £10 billion.
In the UK, the effects from an attack are often more concentrated than in the US, as the modelling finds that compromising 29% of national capacity could be sufficient to trigger a nationwide outage.
Rafael Narezzi, Co-Founder and CEO of Centrii who are responisble for the report, 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. Neither action damages a battery. The effect is closer to a distributed denial-of-service attack than a conventional outage.”
By analysing cyber-physical exposure in BESS, the GRIDLOCK risk assessment found that if mandatory certification and regular attack-readiness drills take place then the probability of danger falls to 61%.
As a result, the earliest likely attack window will change from 2027 to 2028.
The research also found that if the security levels are increased for the infrastructure, then the cost of an attack is estimated to drop to £400 million to £1 billion. This creates a return on proactive security investment of around five to 20 times.
The government has estimated that between 23GW and 27GW of battery storage will be required by 2030 and while the balancing function in modern fleets is often managed remotely, it exposes them to attacks.
Copyright © 2026 Energy Live News LtdELN