America’s grid security is one of the most vital aspects of safety in the country. Homes, hospitals, factories, grocery stores, and everything else in this modern country demand reliable power. With the recent news that China had inserted “kill switches” in solar inverters imported to the United States and Europe, news risks have to be accounted for. Gary Abernathy raises the alarm in an op-ed for Real Clear Energy, encouraging Congress to protect the American power grid by legislating safety measures into imports of grid technology. He concludes:
The episode again highlights the vital need for tougher regulations to ensure our nation’s energy security. The Empowerment Alliance’s model legislation – the Affordable, Reliable and Clean Energy Security act (ARC-ES) – would require “energy sources that are primarily produced within the U.S. and infrastructure that will reduce our reliance on foreign nations for critical materials and manufacturing.”
The time has passed for any reasonable argument suggesting that such legislation is not urgently needed, both at the federal and state levels. The notion of attacks from foreign adversaries on America’s energy infrastructure has often been the stuff of fantasy and “what-if” scenarios. Those have now been replaced with concrete evidence of nefarious, embedded components from a foreign superpower, just waiting for someone in Beijing to flip a switch and send Americans hurtling into a powerless abyss.
Let it sink in: China was secretly embedding technology in components shipped to the U.S. that could have triggered a massive power outage.
It’s time for Congress to embed a “kill switch” of its own on the ability of foreign countries to disable the U.S. power grid. That assurance can only come when we take America’s energy independence from being a worthy goal to a mandated reality.
Action Line: Are you personally prepared for a grid outage? Grids are increasingly fragile with the addition of renewables and increased demand from artificial intelligence. It might not take much of a nudge from bad actors to take the whole grid down. Do you have a backup generator? How about solar panels of your own that work when the grid is down? It’s time to begin building redundancies into your power security. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
