Our nation’s aggressive pursuit of “green energy” goals is putting both electric grid reliability and security at risk — necessitating state action and better preparedness.
Over the past decade, many state governments have set aggressive renewable energy mandates regarding the adoption of grid-scale wind and solar power generation systems and the shuttering of fossil fuel generators. Whether these policy mandates were well-intentioned or the result of foreign influence operations designed to undermine US energy security, most states are meeting their targets.
The closing of baseload power generators, like coal plants, and the simultaneous deep penetration of wind and solar power generation systems have introduced risks to electric grid reliability. These risks were seen first-hand in the 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout, which caused widespread outages in Spain and Portugal and which was triggered by sub-synchronous oscillations and subsequent sub-synchronous resonance from an over-reliance on inverter-based renewable systems.
Recently, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) — the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO), which is designated by Congress to manage America’s bulk power system (BPS) — released its “2025 Summer Reliability Assessment” with the statement that “Operators in many parts of the BPS face challenges in meeting higher demand this summer with a resource mix that, in general, has less flexibility and more variability.”
That’s a very polite way of warning that the “resource mix” — i.e., too much wind and solar and not enough baseload power generation — is a problem.
The report pointed out elevated risk areas (found in the following document), which is where there is a “potential for insufficient operating reserves in above-normal conditions.”
What the report did not cover are the supply chain and security risks associated with the tremendous adoption of these wind and solar systems.
Supply Chain Concerns
America’s huge push to adopt grid-scale wind and solar systems has also led us to import massive amounts of this infrastructure from a hostile nation that has been hacking our infrastructure for many years — China.
The International Energy Agency reports that China dominates eighty to ninety-five percent of global solar photovoltaic (PV) supply chains and controls the production of the critical inverters often bundled with solar and wind systems. According to the Washington Post, the United States imports approximately eighty percent of its solar components and seventy percent of its grid-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) from China or Chinese-affiliated suppliers.
A December 2021 report by retired US Army Command Sergeant Major Michael Mabee for the Secure-the-Grid Coalition revealed that the United States imported 171,288,538 Chinese inverters from 2002 to October 2021, and the numbers are only rising.
A 2024 report by the Department of Energy (DOE) projects a 47.6% annual rise in inverter-based power generation through 2035, potentially leading to a forty-nine-fold increase in Chinese inverters embedded in the US grid if current wind and solar energy investments are not reversed.
Security Concerns
National security experts have repeatedly warned federal regulators about the cybersecurity risks associated with importing hardware from adversarial nations like China. Internationally renowned control system cybersecurity expert Joseph Weiss has emphasized that Chinese-made BESSs, integral to storing energy from wind and solar power, are highly susceptible to cyberattacks, with many capable of communicating directly with servers in China. This vulnerability creates a pathway for adversaries to disrupt the grid, potentially inducing blackouts or worse.
The first Trump Administration took security warnings seriously after discovering a Chinese-manufactured transformer with a “hardware backdoor” — declaring a “grid security emergency” on May 1, 2020, and issuing Executive Order 13920: “Securing the United States Bulk-Power System.” Hoping that federal regulators would align grid protection standards with this order, the Secure the Grid Coalition filed a formal, docketed complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), only to have it denied less than six months later. Three months after that, President Biden suspended Executive Order 13920 on his first day in office.
According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Chinese-manufactured transformers imported into the U.S. rose from 300 in 2020 to 554 in February 2025.
Data Source: U.S. Census Bureau. Image Source: Center for Security Policy.
While Executive Order 13920 has yet to be reinstated by the current Trump administration, it has been making major policy shifts away from incentivizing wind and solar generation for the bulk power system. Even so, little historical evidence exists that either FERC or NERC will aggressively address the security issues associated with these systems, despite recent warnings about “kill switches” found hidden in Chinese-manufactured solar equipment. To be fair, the scope of the problem is so large — and so many states have provided financial incentives for grid-scale wind and solar systems — that this threat will need to be addressed at the state and local level as well.
The States Must Act
Given the reliability and security risks, states should rapidly reevaluate their policies and the “green energy” mandates that demand and incentivize grid-scale wind and solar systems. Similarly, since electrons don’t care about state boundaries, they must evaluate how they are connected to other states with such mandates. Electrons also don’t care about political parties — and so the effort to enhance the reliability and security of the grid must be a bipartisan effort.
So far, some states have already begun the process of prioritizing reliability and security through various types of legislation. Some, such as Virginia, Indiana, and Louisiana, have expanded the definition of “clean energy” to go beyond just wind and solar systems to consider other generation sources such as nuclear power, which can be defined as “renewable” if we harness the energy of slightly used nuclear fuel. Other states, such as Kentucky, Missouri, and Utah, have taken legislative steps to increase electric reliability by more strongly regulating the retirement of dispatchable electric generation facilities (such as nuclear, coal, and natural gas) in an effort to keep these systems going.
On the security front, Texas took a major step in 2021 with the passage of the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act, which seeks to address concerns associated with adversarial nations being able to access critical systems through the supply chain. The bill’s sponsor, Senator Tan Parker, also authored legislation launching a state-level Cyber Command to bolster cyber defenses.
Still, concerns among Texan citizens and lawmakers about the risks associated with BESSs — ranging from fire safety and environmental protection to cybersecurity and landowner rights — led to nineteen separate bills being filed on these matters in 2025. The most comprehensive grid security legislation in Texas filed so far has been championed for more than ten years by Senator Bob Hall — and it may soon become law, giving the state its own independent “Grid Security Commission” to address “all hazards” to the Texas grid. Other states would be wise to follow Texas’ lead, though it will be a more complicated process since no other state possesses its own independent electrical grid.
Our People Must Prepare
No matter how fast the federal and state governments try to move to address the reliability and the security risks associated with America’s ambitious adoption of Chinese-made wind and solar components, it may not be fast enough. Citizens will likely become more and more accustomed to receiving requests from their utilities to decrease power usage and to receiving “load shedding” alerts alongside local power outages. “Load shedding” is the term utilities use when they intentionally black out certain portions of the grid to maintain power for others, ensuring overall grid stability and causing what are known as “rolling blackouts.”
Worse yet, the Chinese Communist Party may decide one day in the future that it’s time to exploit the many supply chain and cyber vulnerabilities that they baked into the equipment they sold us. If this happens, the blackouts won’t be “rolling” but rather major and persistent. This is where domestically sourced, small-scale wind and solar power generators would be a helpful asset, alongside other forms of local energy, enabling the operator to function independently of the bulk power grid. Prudent state- and county-level emergency managers can play a major role in public education and promote enhanced personal, family, and community preparedness, following the example of Waldo County, Maine.
Ultimately, it’ll be up to the American people writ large to recognize that our aggressive push to adopt grid-scale wind and solar energy has placed us in a precarious position from which we must course correct. The more people are willing to speak the truth about the associated reliability, supply chain, and security concerns, the faster that’ll happen.
About the Authors: Tommy Waller and Douglas Ellsworth
Lt. Col. Tommy Waller is the President & CEO of the nonprofit Center for Security Policy. Waller retired from the U.S. Marines after two decades of service in both active duty and the reserves as an Infantry and Expeditionary Ground Reconnaissance Officer with deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, and South America and with cross-assigned service to the U.S. Air Force’s Electromagnetic Defense Task Force (EDTF). His formal education includes numerous military schools and colleges, a B. A. in International Relations from Tulane University, and executive education from the Wharton School. In addition to running the Center for Security Policy, he also manages the nationwide bipartisan Secure the Grid Coalition.
Douglas Ellsworth is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and serves as the Co-Director of the Center-sponsored Secure the Grid (STG) Coalition — an ad hoc group of policy, energy, and national security experts, legislators, and industry insiders who are dedicated to strengthening the resilience of America’s electrical grid. Through the support of the Center for Security Policy, the STG Coalition aims to raise awareness about the national security threat of grid vulnerability, and encourage the steps needed to neutralize it. The STG Coalition brings a wide variety of expertise in cybersecurity, physical security, public policy and expressly serves the public interest. Mr. Ellsworth’s full bio can be found here.
Image: Shutterstock/tonton
