In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo Bay with four coal-powered warships and turned their guns on Japan. The ships belched black smoke, rattled the coastline and terrified a nation that had never seen an industrial war up close. Perry called it diplomacy. The Japanese called them the Kurofune – the black ships.
They worked.
Japan opened its ports not because it agreed, but because it was forced to confront an overwhelming, dirty power.
America likes to tell itself that story as a triumph. But almost two centuries later, we sail a new series of black ships – and this time we turn them on ourselves.
Their name is FEOC.
Phar out, man – America’s clean energy industry just realized it’s in trouble. Not by markets, technology or competition, but by policies deployed like a gunboat: loud, blunt and indifferent to collateral damage. FEOC – the Foreign Entity of Concern rule – is enforced with the subtlety of a coal-fired dreadnought pulling into a modern port.
We all knew the One Big Bill (OBB) was coming. It was written in anger, financed by oil and pushed through Congress like a tantrum with a title. It was intended to destroy rooftop solar by eliminating the 30 percent federal credit that homeowners had relied on for nearly two decades. Stupid, short-sighted, self-sabotaging – sure. But survivable.
What no one expected was the mistake.
The supervision.
The moment the guns failed.
They forgot the batteries.
While lawmakers have eliminated the solar credit, they have neglected to make any reference to the standalone battery incentive. Batteries – unlike panels – continued to qualify for the same 30 percent credit. Overnight, the industry plunged into what installers began calling the Battery Rush. Homeowners realized that a battery didn’t need sunshine. A grid connection, a tariff plan and basic mathematics were required.
Charging when electricity is cheap.
Discharge when power is excessive.
Flatten bills.
Exit disruptions.
Independence without a single panel on the roof.
Congress tried to destroy solar energy and inadvertently unleashed something more dangerous to the old order: energy autonomy.
And then the Black Ships arrived.
Starting in 2026, FEOC will declare that if any part of a battery is returned to China, Russia, Iran or North Korea, the credit will disappear. No transition period based on production reality. There is no recognition that China controls most of the global battery supply chain. Just a cannon shot across the bow.
The message is simple: comply or sink.
FEOC does not correct a loophole. It’s destroying the domestic energy storage market and replacing it with something older, dirtier and louder.
Perry’s ships were powered by coal.
Diesel determines the future of FEOC.
Because if the batteries are blocked, the electricity grid will not magically stabilize. It falls back on what regulators already allow: diesel generators behind large stores, warehouses, data centers, hospitals and factories. Loud, dirty machines buzzing through heat waves, blackout seasons and climate chaos – all replacing quiet, modular, distributed storage that was already working.
This is not resilience.
This is regression with a security label.
I’ve seen this movie before. In Japan decades ago, I saw power structures use fear and violence to crush innovators who acted too early and too loudly. I fired sixty employees in one week. I still remember their faces. FEOC feels the same logic, dressed in modern language: punishment without technique, authority without accountability.
Japan survived the Black Ships by adapting, industrializing, and ultimately mastering the technologies that once intimidated the country. It seems America is choosing a different lesson: sailing gunboats into its own port and wondering why the dock workers are scattering.
Sun is a disinfectant.
Solar energy exposes inefficiency.
Batteries stabilize reality.
FEOC blocks the sun – and calls the darkness safety.
Which leaves us staring at the smoke on the horizon at the end of the ride and asking the only question that matters now:
Who is actually in charge of the FEOC?
