The Federal Communications Commission has banned new internationally manufactured power inverters, like those used in solar PV and energy storage projects, from being imported into the United States.
Yesterday, the FCC added “foreign-produced power inverters” to a list of communications products and services that it considers a risk to national security, citing alleged risks for supply chain and cybersecurity for electrical infrastructure.
“These vulnerabilities could enable foreign firms to turn off the inverters or use them to collect and exfiltrate data, facilitate remote access and surveillance by foreign government actors, or be otherwise exploited through a cyberattack,” the public notice filing states. Industry members who spoke on condition of anonymity believe this ban only affects inverters using wireless communications technologies.
Only international inverters conditionally approved by the FCC can be imported into the United States. Receiving that designation requires submitting an application to the FCC.
This ban is primarily concerned with where the inverter is made, not a company’s country of origin. Inverters that are unaffected by the ban must be manufactured domestically and follow the Buy American statute. The statute requires that a product be manufactured with domestic components representing at least 65% of a product’s total cost. That percentage increases to 75% starting in 2029.
“I welcome these executive branch national security determinations, and I am pleased that the FCC has now added foreign produced advanced robotics and power inverters to the FCC’s Covered List,” said Brendan Carr, FCC chairman, in a press release. “Following President Trump’s leadership, the FCC will continue to do our part to secure America’s critical supply chains, and, with today’s action, the FCC is acting in lock step with our national security agencies to do just that.”
An “Executive Branch interagency body,” whose membership was not disclosed, directed the FCC to ban foreign inverters. The agency claims that inverters that have already been purchased, approved by the FCC or already in operation are not affected by the ban. New models of power inverters will only be eligible for import if approved by the FCC. Older models can still be imported.
One other exception is that “small batches” of affected inverters can be imported for product testing and development, but not for official deployment or sale.
While this ban is effective immediately, questions remain about how it will affect interconnection for solar and energy storage projects and inverter procurement moving forward. This announcement arrives six months after a Dept. of Energy investigation determined that a sampling of Chinese-manufactured inverters didn’t contain malicious software.
Prior to the FCC issuing this power inverter ban, the agency was not involved in approving which inverter technologies could be deployed in the United States.
Updated July 30 to include further details on what inverters are not affected by the ban.
The big question is what actually constitutes “prior FCC approval” of an inverter. If they mean an FCC ID exists, then virtually no inverters have approval as they did not need an FCC ID before unless they contained, as standard, a radio transmitter device (eg. wifi, bluetooth, cellular). It appears that a Self Declaration of Conformity (SDoC) is probably NOT sufficient to declare a product previously FCC approved – this has been what most inverters have relied on in the past as radiated and conducted emissions were part of the UL1741 test regimen and then an SDoC could be issued by the OEM. This means that virtually all inverters will need to go through the DoW/DHS waiver approval process to continue to be sold and installed in the US.
Second issue is that even domestically assembled/manufactured products may have to go through the waiver approval process if they don’t hit the domestic content threshold under BAA rules. I think this will mean pretty much every domestic inverter will have to be approved since there simply is no supply chain in place for much of the inverter BoM today.