- President Trump’s national emergency bans foreign-made power grid equipment over cybersecurity fears, but the White House still hasn’t said which countries are actually targeted.
- Whether Utahns’ rates go up depends entirely on how narrowly the federal government defines “risky” equipment — if the restrictions stay focused on inverters, Utah officials expect no rate impact, but if transformers get swept in too, Utahns could see rate increases.
- Rocky Mountain Power says it’s not worried about consumer rates or security threats because the company began phasing out foreign tech years ago.
President Donald Trump and the White House released an executive order last week declaring a national state of emergency on the U.S. power grid. The reason, Trump claims, is that “certain foreign actors are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities” in the power system, according to the Aug. 26 executive order.
To protect the electric grid from foreign security and cyberthreats, it bans the purchase, import or installation of foreign-made equipment supplied by countries that are threats — though the White House has yet to reveal which countries are included.
And that really matters.
Which countries are truly a threat?
“Almost everything that we buy in America is made overseas,” said Utah House Public Utilities and Energy Committee Chair Colin W. Jack, R-St. George.
“So, this sounds pretty dire when (Trump) says, ‘Well, we gotta not use so many international materials ...’ and there’s probably nothing we could buy that isn’t international materials,” he continued.
Jack said he imagines the White House is specifically targeting wind, solar and battery products made in China.
This wouldn’t come as a shock. Just earlier this week, Trump said, “China could not be happier with this anti data center movement” in a Truth Social post — claiming other countries that embrace modern technology pull ahead in the race for global control.
Jack agreed, saying as materials with spying capabilities proliferate on the grid, “China does have access to control a majority of the generation in the country.”
Jack — who is also an electrical engineer and former chief operating officer at Dixie Power — recognized the difficulties of eliminating all foreign dependence. He pointed to the example of Dixie Power buying transformers from General Electric, which is an American company, but has products assembled in Mexico.
Research from Congress found that 25%-30% of finished distribution transformers are imported — mostly from Taiwan, Canada and Mexico. Looping in countries like Mexico and Canada “would be catastrophic and I would be shocked if they were that careless,” he said.
Not only would it slow down production, it could raise rates for Utahns.
Are Utahns paying the price?
Jack says the cost Utahns might pay depends on how much equipment ends up in the White House net.
If the White House is “surgical,” says Jack, and “draws a net around what we all know to be high risk equipment — which are the inverters that control wind, solar and batteries — then that won’t affect rates, because those products are all pretty external to the utility.”
Jack remains optimistic about how the White House will handle future decisions, saying: “I don’t see this affecting rates if the administration is careful about where they draw the line and what’s a risk to national security.”
For Utahns, Rocky Mountain Power doesn’t seem to think the executive order will raise rates — as the utility began eliminating foreign security threats years ago.
What has already been done?
“We have been making a lot of these changes over the last couple years,” said Jonathan Whitesides, Rocky Mountain Power spokesperson.
He pointed to the example of drone line inspection. Back in 2021, the company owned over 60,000 miles of transmission distribution lines.
“We have to inspect those, and drones really help do a lot of that,” he said.
Rocky Mountain Power historically used DJI drones — a commonly used brand — but felt they ran the risk of transmitting footage or information.
“And so, a couple years ago, we actually took all of our DJI drones out of service, and now we go with Skydio,” Whitesides said. “It doesn’t have the ability to access the drone through remote radio access frequency. It basically eliminates that risk for a third party or a bad actor to tap it, hack into it and then have footage of critical infrastructure — in our case, the electric, energy industry, transmission lines, substations, etc.”
Whitesides said because the company took actions like this and others, they are confident they have already mitigated various security threats and avoided large costs to switch from foreign vendors to domestic vendors now.
“Ultimately, because we planned accordingly, we didn’t run into any issues where we couldn’t serve a new development or a new neighborhood or whatever it may be,” he said.
The Utah Legislature has been working on this issue for years as well, according to Jack.
“The most important thing to understand is that there are, in fact, threats to the national grid, and those threats are largely known, and have been identified, and we’re working hard to address them in state law,” he said.
If future decisions are made carefully, Jack believes the executive order “should enhance security without raising rates and without causing any kind of outages or shortages.”