Securing the Grid While Growing the Grid

Key Takeaways

The rules are being written now.
Executive Order 14421 has the Department of Energy writing implementing rules by December 24, 2026, with comments on its Request for Information due October 9. A parallel FCC action already restricts foreign-made, remotely connected inverters.

Neither track is a blanket ban.
The order applies only where a transaction has a Covered Foreign Entity nexus and the Department finds undue or unacceptable risk, and it allows mitigation, licensing, and prequalification. The FCC has run a case-by-case approval path from the start.

Origin is a signal, not a safeguard.
The risks the order names travel through code, connections, and control, and they work the same whether a device is built abroad or at home. A ban governs geography; a standard governs the risk, on every device.

The standard does not need to be invented.
NERC, NIST, IEEE, UL, and IEC already define measurable security requirements, and the FCC already clears compliant equipment case by case. Voters are there too: by 69% to 19% they say how equipment is built, tested, and controlled matters more than where it was made.

The recommendation.
Define risk by a verifiable, technology-neutral standard built on those existing controls, prequalify through independent U.S. testing aligned with the FCC, mitigate installed equipment before removing it, and keep the cost to ratepayers in view.