New CESER Report Offers Supply Chain Mitigation Strategies for Battery Storage Systems

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are a critical component of grid reliability and resilience today, providing rapid response capabilities while enabling grid modernization and capacity expansion across the United States. As utilities, communities, and customers prepare to deploy significant BESS capacity over the next several years, the United States has an opportunity to build security into battery system design and deployments.

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) teamed up with Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to rapidly assess supply chain risks to BESS and identify mitigation strategies to proactively address adversarial risks to the supply chain. The resulting BESS Report proposes strategic mitigation priorities along three timeframes: 

1. Technical solutions for securing the existing operational base of battery systems; 
2. Considerations for the design of new battery systems with today’s equipment supply chain; and 
3. Policy and technical approaches that prioritize U.S. investments in manufacturing capability to secure and adapt the BESS supply chain over the next decade.  

The Bess Report provides a framework for assessing the current dominance of foreign-manufactured components in the supply chains for BESS, inverter-based resources, and transformers. It offers high-impact, actionable solutions to service partners, industry, and government to address supply chain risks for currently installed, in design, and future deployments.

CESER continues to collaborate across DOE, the national labs, and industry to proactively implement supply chain mitigations in BESS and other critical energy infrastructure.