Nuvation Energy Collaborates with Idaho National Laboratory to Strengthen Cybersecurity for Battery Energy Storage

A shared, consequence‑focused approach to cybersecurity helps strengthen safety, reliability, and resilience in modern energy storage systems.

Nuvation Energy recently completed a collaborative Cyber‑Informed Engineering (CIE) workshop with Idaho National Laboratory (INL) focused on strengthening cybersecurity for battery energy storage systems. The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) sponsors CIE initiatives and manages the CIE program.

CIE is an engineering‑led approach that integrates cybersecurity considerations into the full lifecycle of a physical system, from concept and design through development and operation, enabling organizations to reduce the worst‑case consequences of cyber events rather than relying solely on intrusion prevention.

Why CIE Matters for Energy Storage

Battery energy storage systems combine digital controls with high‑energy physical processes. As a result, cybersecurity extends beyond an information technology (IT) concern and becomes an engineering and operational resilience imperative. CIE addresses this by focusing on safety, reliability, and performance outcomes, and by designing systems to remain resilient even under adverse conditions.

What INL Evaluated: Building on Strength

During the engagement, INL and Nuvation Energy teams brought together cross‑functional experts to review key elements of Nuvation’s product and development approach through a consequence‑focused lens.

INL identified several existing capabilities that can support strong cyber‑physical resilience when intentionally applied, including:

• Layered protective behaviors designed to push the system toward safe operation under fault or abnormal conditions
• Configuration controls that can establish a robust operating envelope and help prevent unsafe changes in the field
• Supervision and monitoring mechanisms that help detect abnormal states and support safe responses
• Independent, high‑integrity safety pathways that maintain protective function even when digital systems are stressed

Collectively, these capabilities serve as meaningful building blocks and a strong foundation for the next phase of improvements.

What We Learned: Ongoing Improvements in Action

INL provided Nuvation with clear, actionable recommendations to further strengthen resilience.

Nuvation Energy is committed to incorporating many of these improvements into both near‑term product development efforts and the long‑term evolution of cybersecurity and engineering practices.

Nuvation’s roadmap includes several focus areas aligned with CIE best practices, such as:

• Extending engineering constraints that limit the impact of command misuse to ensure harmful outcomes are further bounded in the event an attacker gains a foothold
• Clearer secure deployment guidance to help integrators and operators apply recommended network and access boundaries
• Enhanced logging, monitoring, and response playbooks to support faster detection and recovery
• Additional control of critical configuration and recovery artifacts to support resilience and rapid restoration
• Additional supply‑chain assurance for high‑consequence components

This work represents an ongoing commitment rather than a one-time initiative. CIE is designed to be embedded into standard engineering workflows over time, and Nuvation Energy is approaching it as a long-term discipline rather than a point in time initiative.

What This Means for Customers

For customers and partners, these efforts reinforce Nuvation Energy’s commitment to cybersecurity through an engineering‑led approach that prioritizes safe, reliable system behavior and long‑term operability.

By incorporating Cyber Informed Engineering principles into product development and system design practices, Nuvation Energy continues to strengthen the resilience of its battery management systems against evolving cyber and operational risks.

This work also supports greater confidence for system integrators, developers, and asset owners deploying battery energy storage systems in increasingly complex and security conscious environments.

About Nuvation Energy

Nuvation Energy provides battery management and energy control solutions for large-scale energy storage systems. With BMS technology in development since 2008 and delivering products at scale since 2015, Nuvation has deployments across hundreds of commercial, industrial, and utility-scale installations worldwide. Nuvation’s core BMS products are UL 1973 Recognized and are designed, engineered, and manufactured in the United States and Canada by a fully North American-based team.

About Idaho National Laboratory 

Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit www.inl.gov. Follow us on social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.