The FCC has added foreign-produced power inverters to its Covered List, immediately restricting new covered models from receiving the equipment authorization generally required for import, marketing, and sale in the United States.
The July 28, 2026, action is narrower and, in some respects, more consequential than early reports suggest. Previously authorized models may remain on
The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly drafting restrictions on foreign-made inverters used in solar and battery energy storage projects, citing concerns that the equipment could be exploited to disrupt U.S. power supplies. No proposed rule has been released, and the effort could still be modified or withdrawn. Recent FCC actions involving foreign-produced drones and consumer
December 9, 2025 Update: Following the D.C. Circuit’s September ruling, parties opted not to seek panel rehearing or en banc review. The deadline to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari expired on December 8, 2025, without any petitions for cert filed, thereby ending the potential for appeals of the decision.
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On September 9
The Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council (EFSC) oversees the siting of large-scale energy facilities like wind and solar power projects, which often include an associated Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). BESS is a critical tool in the decarbonization toolbox, offering backup power when it’s needed and addressing intermittency and other grid limitation problems. Though many
7/8/2024 Update: The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated the D.C. Circuit’s order, discussed below. The D.C. Circuit applied Chevron deference in affirming FERC’s decision in the proceeding below. As a result, the U.S. Supreme Court has vacated and remanded back to the D.C. Circuit to reconsider the case in light of Chevron being overturned.
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On June 30, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 205 (“AB 205”), which, among various other things, expands the siting jurisdiction of the California Energy Commission (“CEC”) to include non-thermal generating facilities, such as solar and wind projects, with a capacity of 50 megawatts (MW) or more. The CEC’s siting jurisdiction was previously
On May 20, 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC or Commission) issued a proposed decision (PD) that would, among other things, adopt Southern California Edison’s (SCE) 24-hour-slice proposal as the new resource adequacy (RA) framework applicable to load-serving entities (LSEs) under the CPUC’s jurisdiction. Generally, the proposal would require each LSE to show that it has enough capacity to meet its specific gross-load profile, including a planning-reserve margin, or PRM, for all 24 hours for the “worst day” of each month. The “worst day” would be defined as the day of the month that has the highest coincident-peak-load forecast. This new RA framework would likely be implemented in 2025, with 2024 serving as a “test year” for the new framework.
The Commission initially began examining potential changes to its RA framework due to significant and ongoing changes in California’s generation-resource mix, with the increasing reliance on variable resources such as solar and wind, and use-limited resources, such as energy storage and demand response, as well as the retirement of older natural gas generation. The Commission solicited proposals for a new RA framework starting in 2020, and in 2021 it tentatively adopted Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) slice-of-day proposal in decision 21-07-014. The Commission ordered a series of workshops to further develop the proposal, culminating in a workshop report submitted March 1, 2022. During the workshops, two alternate proposals were developed: SCE’s 24-hour-slice proposal, and a two-slice proposal developed by Gridwell Consulting. The parties generally favored one of the two alternate proposals, rather than the PG&E slice-of-day proposal. The selection of SCE’s 24-hour-slice proposal will set the direction for further development of the new RA framework.
Continue Reading The California Public Utilities Commission Issues Proposed Decision on New Resource Adequacy Framework
The California Energy Commission (CEC) has continued its efforts to implement Governor Newsom’s July 30, 2021 Emergency Proclamation, which was intended to free up energy supply to meet demand during extreme heat events and wildfires, and to expedite the deployment of additional generation.
The Emergency Proclamation authorized the CEC, which is responsible for licensing thermal powerplants of 50 megawatts (MW) or more, to also license new, or expansions of, battery storage systems of 20 MW or more that are capable of discharging for at least two hours and will deliver net peak energy by October 31, 2022.
Continue Reading California Energy Commission Adopts Expedited Siting Order for Energy Storage
As the energy storage industry continues on its trajectory of near-exponential growth, in the course of assisting our clients we are seeing a wide variety of battery energy storage system (BESS) offerings in the market, and we don’t always like what we see from a project finance and risk perspective.
Battery system offerings are all
The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) is accepting stakeholder comments until August 13, 2019 on its new Hybrid Resources Issue Paper, kicking off a stakeholder initiative expected to proceed until April 2020. Initial comments submitted now will help shape the direction of the initiative and potential market changes.
Though not exclusively limited to renewables + storage (the CAISO defines “hybrid” to mean any combination of multiple technologies or fuel types combined into a single resource with a single point of interconnection), the CAISO emphasizes the anticipated impacts of increased storage market penetration, including new operational and forecasting challenges, as a driving force for the initiative. The CAISO has observed that the number of hybrid resource configurations seeking interconnection comprises approximately 41% of the CAISO’s Generator Interconnection Queue’s total capacity.Continue Reading CAISO Seeks Stakeholder Feedback on Hybrid Resource Market Participation