A utility could shut off the power to a house with a person inside it — on an oxygen machine, in a heat dome, in January — and call it debt collection. And if you tried to leave, to make your own power on your own land, zoning laws and covenants written with utility backing said no. This statute ends both. A debt is collected as a debt — never by turning off the power. And the decision to leave the grid becomes yours.
A utility could disconnect an occupied home for arrears — including a home with someone on an oxygen concentrator, or insulin in the refrigerator — and call it collection.Check it
Grid operators presided over failures they had been warned about for years and called them acts of God. In February 2021, a preventable failure killed hundreds of people.Check it
And the exit was fenced off. Mandatory-hookup ordinances, zoning rules, building codes, and HOA covenants — often written with utility backing — could bar you from powering your own home on your own land, and in much of the country made going off-grid effectively impossible.Check it
Those rules were rarely about safety. They were about the fact that a customer who can leave is a customer with leverage.Check it
A debt is collected as a debt — through billing, payment plans, and if necessary a court. Never by turning off the power to a house with a person inside it.
A foreseeable, preventable grid failure is a constitutional violation, not bad weather. An operator cannot plead an act of God for a hazard it was told about and declined to fix.
You may generate, store, and use your own power on land you own or lawfully occupy. No mandatory hookup. No zoning ban. No covenant veto.
Regulation may protect people from harm — nothing else. If a rule protects a person, it stands. If it protects a revenue stream, it falls.
Fall behind on the bill and the power went off — regardless of who was inside, what machine they depended on, or what the temperature was.Check it
Disconnection is prohibited where it would foreseeably endanger an occupant, and danger is presumed in extreme heat or cold, where someone depends on powered medical equipment, or where an occupant is a child, elderly, ill, or disabled. Registration is simple, free, and never has to be filed twice for a permanent condition.
Cutting the power was the collection method — leverage applied directly to a person’s survival.Check it
Income-calibrated payment plans first, and civil action if necessary. A prohibited disconnection carries statutory damages and fees — and where it kills or seriously injures someone, the officers who authorized the practice are personally liable and referable for prosecution.
Operators ignored known vulnerabilities, then called the resulting catastrophe an act of God. Nobody answered for it.Check it
Enforceable standards for winterization, reserve margin, and fuel security, with mandatory public disclosure of known vulnerabilities and the cost to fix them. A foreseeable, preventable failure violates Right 53. The act-of-God defense survives only where the operator met every standard and the event exceeded the design basis those standards required.
The rules were tilted toward keeping you a utility customer — mandatory-service requirements, standby charges, and permitting hurdles stood in the way of generating your own power, even where doing so was safe and harmed no one.Check it
No government or association may prohibit self-generation, mandate grid connection, require minimum purchase, or condition occupancy on being a utility customer. Every inconsistent ordinance, code, and covenant is void. Nobody is fined or condemned for lawfully powering their own home.
Rules that existed to protect utility revenue were dressed as safety codes, and aesthetics covenants did the rest.Check it
Regulation may address only physical harm — backfeed protection, fire and electrical code, battery containment, combustion venting, structural load — by standards that are objective, published, and applied the same whether or not you stay a customer. A rule whose purpose or effect is to preserve revenue or discourage exit is void. That a utility helped write it is admissible evidence of purpose.
Approval was discretionary, so it could be delayed indefinitely, priced out, or simply denied without explanation.Check it
Meet the published safety standard and approval is a ministerial duty — not a negotiation. A denial must name the standard failed and the fix that satisfies it. Silence past 45 days is approval by operation of law. The burden is on the government to prove a restriction prevents physical harm; it never rests on you to justify wanting to leave.
Renters had no path to self-generation at all — making energy independence a privilege of people who already owned a roof.Check it
A self-contained, removable, plug-in system is yours as of right — no landlord veto, no surcharge, no refusal to renew. Anything that penetrates the structure or alters the building’s wiring needs the owner’s written consent, and the owner may refuse for any reason about the building. But a landlord who resells power to tenants may not refuse in order to protect that revenue — that refusal is void.
Fixed network costs were recovered however the utility liked — including in ways engineered to make leaving uneconomic.Check it
The grid stays a shared asset. Network costs may not punish those who leave or shift the burden onto those who stay — who are, as a class, poorer than those who can afford to self-generate. No charge may be structured to trap customers. And if you self-generate you keep the right to interconnect, sell surplus back, and reconnect without penalty.
This is the plain-language version. The binding text is CS-41, which implements Right 53 of the Constitution.
This is your country’s law. Help shape the next draft of it.
