“Blocking new purchases is the easy part,” said John Bruggeman, a virtual chief information security officer at the telecom company CBTS. “Knowing what’s already running is where the real work starts.” He was talking about Executive Order 14420, which President Donald Trump signed on August 26, 2026, declaring a national emergency over foreign-made power grid hardware.
For the battery storage industry, the order matters more than most.
What the order covers
The order reaches transformers, inverters, battery energy storage systems, circuit breakers, generators, protective relays and industrial control systems, along with their firmware and any remote access a vendor or administrator could use from outside a utility’s perimeter. It applies only to transmission infrastructure at 69 kilovolts or higher. Local distribution, the poles and wires that feed homes and businesses, is excluded.
Tech Times reports that the order goes past new purchases. For equipment already installed before August 26, the Secretary of Energy may require utilities to identify, isolate, monitor, disconnect or replace specific components after consulting defense and intelligence leaders. Crowell & Moring, a law firm, described the scope as “both forward and backwards looking.”
Nothing is banned yet. The Department of Energy has 120 days, to about December 24, 2026, to write implementing rules. Until then the order names no vendor and bars no product. A covered foreign entity is one from a country under US arms embargoes or sanctions, or one the Energy Secretary designates a security concern.
Why batteries and inverters
An earlier version, Executive Order 13920, signed in May 2020, focused mostly on large Chinese power transformers. This one adds inverters and battery systems, and the reasoning is about software. A transformer is steel, copper and oil. An inverter or battery management system is network-connected and maintained remotely by its maker through cloud platforms. That same channel could let anyone with access to the vendor’s update systems send commands to equipment handling power on transmission lines.
Chinese battery makers CATL, BYD, EVE, REPT and Gotion are the practical focus of the storage provisions, Tech Times says, though the order names none of them. In practice, “conditioning” might mean placing such equipment on an isolated network segment that cannot reach vendor clouds, requiring on-site visits for firmware updates, and logging every command sent to the devices.
How one developer is reacting
Energy Vault, a storage developer, is following the order closely, its chief revenue officer Marco Terruzzin told Utility Dive. The company is assessing the impact project by project while it diversifies suppliers. In February it signed an agreement with Peak Energy for up to 1.5 GWh of US-made sodium-ion battery systems.
It is also growing. In late September Energy Vault said it would buy a 2.3-GW development portfolio from Goshe Energy Storage, including 350 MW of ready-to-build capacity that could come online in early 2028, backed by up to $40 million in credit from S2G Investments. “Demand alone does not build projects,” Terruzzin said. “Grid access, equipment availability, financing and credible customer commitments will distinguish projects that proceed from those that do not.”
Uncertainty over procurement
Grid-scale equipment can take two to four years to procure, so the ambiguity bites. Tech Times notes that construction lenders have already begun requiring cybersecurity audits as a condition of project financing. The Edison Electric Institute says its member utilities plan to invest $1.1 trillion in grid infrastructure between 2025 and 2029.
The legal footing is also shaky. The Biden administration suspended the 2020 order in January 2021 and let it lapse. This one rests on the same emergency-powers statute, which a later president can reverse without Congress. The order itself appropriates no money. After the 120-day rulemaking, a second clock starts: within 180 days the Energy Secretary must recommend changes to federal procurement rules to favor domestically made energy equipment.
Sources
- Trump Order Gives DOE Power Over Grid Equipment Already Inside US Substations
- Amid acquisition, Energy Vault keeps close watch on Trump’s bulk-power order, executive says | Utility Dive
