SEIA Unveils Solar & Storage Agenda For Grid Reliability

With the Trump administration scaling back its support for renewable energy, SEIA is urging continued momentum for solar and storage. Its newly released policy agenda emphasizes expanded deployment to improve the reliability of the nation’s electric grid. 

The plan, a ‘blueprint’, highlights infrastructure upgrades, battery investment, and domestic supply chain development to meet growing demand for electricity from AI and data centers, based on solar and storage. 

“The reliability of our electric grid – and America’s ability to meet future energy demand – depend on adding more solar and storage to the energy mix,” said President and CEO of SEIA, Abigail Ross Hopper.  

She stressed that the association’s reliability policy agenda focuses on strengthening the grid through coordinated actions at all levels of government.

Titled Solar and Storage Industry Policy Agenda for a Reliable, Secure Grid, SEIA’s policy agenda seeks the following: 

• Supporting development of domestic supply chains and traceability standards for solar and energy storage products and components  

• Meeting the demand challenges of AI and data centers by creating regulatory fast tracks for solar and storage projects co-located in high-growth load zones 

• Reforming interconnection processes to reduce costly delays and get solar and storage on the grid faster 

• Modernizing transmission infrastructure to expand the grid’s capacity to transmit more electricity 

• Investing in long-duration storage by fostering new research and deployment strategies 

• Reforming wholesale market design to properly account for the value solar and storage bring to the grid 

• Reforming state utility resource planning to evaluate solar and storage as capacity and energy resources that support reliability, and 

• Incentivizing Distributed Energy Resource (DER) programs, including unlocking virtual power plants to strengthen the local and bulk power grid. Specifically, it calls for increased deployment of 1-10 MW ‘front of meter’ distribution-connected solar plus storage to help delay and defer distribution upgrades and support bulk power grid. 

Hopper added, “If this administration is serious about winning the AI race, we need policymakers at every level to put in place commonsense, grid-strengthening policies that accelerate solar and storage deployment. Enacting this agenda will help us meet skyrocketing demand for energy and keep energy prices down for families.” 

Stacy J. Ettinger, SEIA’s SVP Supply Chain & Trade, will discuss the solar PV manufacturing scene in the US in the wake of shifting federal priorities at the TaiyangNews 2025 Solar—Made in the USA summit at Las Vegas on September 8, 2025, at RE+. Co-organized with RE+ and EUPD Research, the summit will feature leading names from the world of solar to discuss the future of US solar and storage manufacturing and future strategies for the players in light of the regulatory hurdles created by the OBBBA. Registrations are open and can be done here.