Delaware Cedes Its Electric Grid Authority to a Solar and Wind Advocacy Organization

June 10, 2026

John Nichols, Fellow, Center of Energy & Environment Policy

Every Delawarean who flips a light switch depends on interconnection rules — the procedures that govern how solar panels, batteries, and other devices connect to the electric grid. Get those rules right and the grid stays safe and costs stay reasonable. Get them wrong and Delaware families and businesses can pay the price, sometimes for years. 

On May 21st, Governor Meyer signed House Bill 269 into law. The bill was presented as a modernization of Delaware’s interconnection rules. Its actual effect reaches much further: it makes the Interstate Renewable Energy Council — a private advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. — the default standard-setter for Delaware’s interconnection rules, in place of the Delaware Public Service Commission, a state agency accountable to Delawareans. 

This new law amends Title 26 of the Delaware Code to require that every Delaware electric supplier to adopt the Interstate Renewable Energy Council’s Model Interconnection Procedures within 12 months of each new edition published by the Council. The Council updates those procedures on its own schedule, for its own purposes, with no obligation to weigh Delaware’s specific grid conditions, reliability requirements, or ratepayer costs. Under this law, electric suppliers in Delaware must align with each newly published edition within 12 months.

Prior to being signed into law, the bill was amended and passed by voice vote, with no individual legislator on record. The original bill required that interconnection rules be ‘aligned with’ the Council’s procedures — language that, while mandatory, left some room for regulatory adaptation. The amendment replaced that flexibility with an absolute mandate: “Any deviation from the Procedures must be affirmatively approved by the utility’s regulatory body in a formal proceeding.” The law substantially shifts the default standard-setting role from the Delaware Public Service Commission to the Interstate Renewable Energy Council.

No Other State Has Chosen to Cede Its Authority

To our knowledge, no other state has enacted a law requiring its electric suppliers to automatically adopt future editions of a private organization’s model interconnection procedures as the binding legal standards. Across the nation, states have modernized their interconnection rules by directing their own commissions to conduct proceedings — open to the public, subject to evidentiary standards, with interveners representing ratepayer interests — to evaluate the Council’s model procedures and incorporate what makes sense for their specific circumstances. New Mexico and New Jersey recently did exactly that. They used the Council’s model as a reference. They did not hand the Council a pen and ask it to write their law.

Delaware appears to be the first. 

House Bill 269 applies not only to Delmarva Power and Light, which the Commission regulates, but also to all of the Delaware Municipal Electric Corporation’s nine member utilities, governed by their individual municipal councils, and to the Delaware Electric Cooperative, whose members voted under authority granted by the General Assembly to remove themselves from Commission oversight entirely — authority established in Title 26 §202(g). If those providers conclude that the Council’s latest procedures are wrong for their customers and seek approval to deviate, the law provides no clear forum in which to do so. Who, exactly, has the authority to approve such a deviation for the Delaware Electric Cooperative?

An Advocacy Organization, Not a Regulatory Body

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council describes its own mission as building “the foundation for rapid adoption of clean energy.” Its accreditation covers certifying the quality of solar installation training programs and instructors. That accreditation has nothing to do with writing interconnection standards for public utilities. The Council’s own Model Interconnection Procedures describe themselves as a “complimentary resource” intended to “guide and inform state utility regulators” — not to govern them. Delaware law now elevates those procedures from guidance into a regulatory framework utilities must follow. The procedures themselves are not engineering standards. They govern policy and process, including application review timelines, approval tracks for different system sizes, and dispute resolution steps. The actual engineering standard governing how equipment must behave on the grid is IEEE Standard 1547-2018, which was developed through an accredited consensus process involving engineers, utilities, manufacturers, and regulators. The Council’s procedures reference that standard, then add policy requirements on top of it. Delaware law now makes those policy choices mandatory.

Who Controls Delaware's Electric Grid?

Supporters argue the measure will accelerate renewable energy deployment and reduce interconnection delays. The question, however, is whether Delaware should permanently delegate evolving grid policy standards to a private advocacy organization rather than retain direct state oversight.

By enacting this law, the General Assembly has handed ongoing standard-setting authority over Delaware’s electric grid to a private organization with no connection to Delaware government, no obligation to weigh Delaware ratepayers’ interests, and no accountability to the people of Delaware. Whether that is something the State of Delaware may lawfully do is a question the General Assembly did not answer.

The question the General Assembly did not answer is now Delaware law.