FCC Extends Foreign Inverter Ban to Wired Devices, Adds 45X Safe Harbor
- Covered List revised: August 20, 2026
- Original listing: July 28, 2026
- BABA domestic content: 65 percent through 2028
- Threshold from 2029: 75 percent
- Removed from list: AC-to-DC rectifiers and off-grid inverters
Three weeks after its foreign inverter ban took effect, the Federal Communications Commission has changed what the ban covers. On August 20, 2026 the agency widened the listing to reach wired devices in the United States, acting on input from the Department of War. Any grid-interactive inverter now falls inside it if the unit contains, or is built to accept, hardware for remote communication over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, cellular or Bluetooth. Manufacturers had read the July definition as aimed at wireless links. That reading is gone.
The same order opened an exit. Inverters from manufacturers eligible for the Section 45X advanced manufacturing production credit are not treated as foreign-produced, which swaps a nationality test for a tax-credit test. That route sits alongside Build America, Buy America rules, which require domestic content above 65 percent of equipment cost through 2028 and 75 percent from 2029.
Why It Matters
Nothing already installed comes off a wall. What the listing blocks is new device models receiving FCC equipment authorization, and that authorization is what permits importation, marketing and sale. A manufacturer whose next model cannot clear it loses the US market for that model while its existing fleet keeps earning.
For buyers, the 45X pathway is where the practical work moves. Law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, quoted by pv magazine USA, read the FCC as saying plainly that the nationality of the company making the inverter is irrelevant. Diligence therefore shifts from corporate ownership to manufacturing eligibility. The limit is the Foreign Entity of Concern rules, which bar Section 45X credits for a prohibited foreign entity, or for a company that hands effective operational control to a majority Chinese-owned firm.
What Changed
Two categories came off the list entirely. Pure AC-to-DC rectifiers and off-grid inverters are out, which narrows the ban to grid-interactive equipment carrying a communications path. Vendors of off-grid and telecom power hardware had been swept in by the July wording.
The wired expansion cuts the other way. An inverter with nothing but an Ethernet port now sits in the same category as one carrying a cellular modem. Stripping the radio out of a design no longer clears it.
Enforcement Reality
This is not a list the FCC extends on its own. Under the Secure Networks Act it acts only on determinations from a qualifying national security authority, and the July 28, 2026 listing followed a White House-convened interagency review. Enforcement then runs through the authorization process rather than field inspection.
Previously authorized models stay legal to import and sell, and consumers keep the right to use inverters they already bought. Units in the field also remain eligible for routine software and firmware security patches, which closes a gap that would otherwise have frozen security updates across installed fleets. Small-batch imports of unauthorized models are still permitted for non-commercial laboratory testing and research.
Critical Perspective
The revision leaves the 65 percent domestic content bar in place through 2028 while handing manufacturers a second route that turns on Section 45X eligibility instead. That eligibility is administered through the tax code rather than by the FCC, so a communications regulator has outsourced the test that now decides what counts as foreign-made. The Covered List has worked this way since 2021, when Huawei and ZTE equipment was blocked from new authorizations while gear already installed stayed in service. If 45X eligibility is the line between banned and permitted hardware, what happens to an inverter fleet whose maker later loses it?
