The Federal Power Act at 16 U.S.C. § 824 Gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Jurisdiction Over the Transmission of Electric Energy in Interstate Commerce, Section 205 Requires Every Public Utility to Charge Only Just and Reasonable Rates Set by a Filed Schedule, Approximately 25 Million Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Strikes Transmit Electricity Through the American Atmosphere Every Year at Voltages of 100 to 300 Million Volts and Currents Above 30,000 Amperes, a Single Bolt Carries Peak Power on the Order of a Terawatt, Roughly Seven Times the Combined Nameplate Capacity of Every Generator on the United States Grid, Not One Bolt Has Filed a Rate Schedule, the Commission Has Never Opened a Docket, and the Largest Unmetered Electric Utility in the Country Operates Almost Entirely at Night During Thunderstorms

I. The Jurisdictional Grant

In 1935, Congress added Part II to the Federal Power Act, codified at 16 U.S.C. § 824, and gave the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission jurisdiction over the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce and the sale of electric energy at wholesale in interstate commerce. Section 205 of the Act, at 16 U.S.C. § 824d, provides that all rates and charges made, demanded, or received by any public utility for or in connection with the transmission or sale of electric energy subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission shall be just and reasonable. Every public utility must file its rate schedules with the Commission. No utility may make or grant any undue preference or advantage to any person, or subject any person to any undue prejudice or disadvantage. Section 206 authorizes the Commission to fix the rates itself when a filed rate is found unjust, unreasonable, unduly discriminatory, or preferential.¹

The jurisdictional trigger is the definition of “public utility” at 16 U.S.C. § 824(e): any person who owns or operates facilities used for the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce, or for the sale of electric energy at wholesale in interstate commerce. The Federal Power Act reaches the entire chain: the generator, the transmission line, the meter, and the rate. Under Section 215, added by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 at 16 U.S.C. § 824o, the Commission certifies the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to set and enforce mandatory reliability standards for the bulk power system. The price of operating outside this regime is set by Section 316A of the Act, at 16 U.S.C. § 825o-1: civil penalties of up to $1,544,521 per violation, per day, as adjusted for inflation.²

Into this framework, twenty-five million times a year, comes lightning.

II. The Generation Fleet

The National Weather Service estimates that cloud-to-ground lightning strikes the United States roughly 25 million times each year. The National Lightning Detection Network’s tally is in the same neighborhood: 23.4 million cloud-to-ground flashes, 55.5 million individual strokes, and 36.8 million distinct ground strike points in a recent year, a count that rose roughly 20 percent in 2025. The death toll runs to nearly fifty Americans a year, a thirty-year average of 49, making lightning the third-leading cause of weather-related death in the country.³

The physical specifications of the fleet are a matter of settled science. A lightning bolt carries voltages of 100 to 300 million volts and currents of 30,000 amperes or more, heating the surrounding air to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about five times hotter than the surface of the sun. The energy of a single bolt is on the order of one billion joules, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for more than three months. The arithmetic of voltage times current puts the peak power of a bolt in the terawatt range. The United States Energy Information Administration reported total utility-scale generating capacity in the country at 1,280,799 megawatts at the end of 2025, about 1.28 terawatts. A single lightning bolt, at peak output, is roughly seven times the combined nameplate capacity of every generator on the American grid. The fleet makes 25 million such deliveries annually, for a combined energy on the order of seven terawatt-hours a year, transmitted in instants, delivered without a tariff, and billed to no one.⁴

A single lightning bolt carries peak power on the order of a terawatt. The combined nameplate capacity of every generator on the United States grid is 1.28 terawatts. The unlicensed fleet delivers seven times the grid’s entire capacity, one bolt at a time.

III. The Transmission System

Section 201 reaches transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce. The lightning fleet’s discharge network spans all fifty states, and the fleet does not only transmit its energy through the air. It transmits it into the interstate transmission system itself. Lightning is responsible for more than 30 percent of all power outages, and roughly half of all forest fires in the western United States are lightning-caused. The National Interagency Fire Center counted 8,294 lightning-caused wildland fires in 2025. Every strike that terminates on a transmission tower, a substation, or a distribution line is an injection of unregulated electric energy into a grid whose every other injection is governed by an interconnection agreement, a queue position, and a filed rate schedule. The lightning fleet interconnects with the bulk power system at no agreement, no study, and no queue. It has no queue position because it does not wait in the queue.⁵

The reliability record follows. Under Section 215, the Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation maintain mandatory reliability standards for the bulk power system, covering fault protection, vegetation management, and event reporting. The fleet introduces roughly 25 million unscheduled electric discharges into the country every year, causes more than thirty percent of its power outages, starts thousands of its wildfires, and reports none of it. There is no entity to file the disturbance report with. The fleet’s reporting compliance rate is zero, matching its rate-filing compliance rate exactly.⁶

IV. The Unmetered Deliveries

The heart of the utility business is the meter. Energy flows one way; money flows the other; the meter reconciles the two. Lightning abolished the meter. A bolt delivers on the order of a billion joules directly to a house, a barn, a tree, or a golfer, with no account, no meter, no bill, and no payment. The receiving customer did not apply for service, was not credit-checked, and signed no interconnection agreement. The utility industry takes theft of service seriously: the criminalization of energy theft, the diversion of utility service, and the tampering of meters is on the books in every state. Lightning consumes the grid’s most expensive function, instantaneous delivery of enormous power, pays nothing for it, and cannot be meter-tampered against because there is no meter to tamper with.⁷

Lightning is responsible for more than thirty percent of all power outages. Every one of them is an unscheduled injection of unregulated electric energy into the interstate transmission system.

V. The Customer Protection Problem

Section 205(b) of the Act forbids any public utility from making or granting any undue preference or advantage to any person, or subjecting any person to any undue prejudice or disadvantage. The lightning fleet has filed no tariff, no service territory, and no rate design, and its deliveries are not uniform. A handful of one-square-mile parcels in Florida are struck more than 33 times per year; Florida and Texas lead the nation in total strikes. The fleet’s customers in the Southeast receive, per capita, a share of unmetered electric delivery that customers in the Pacific Northwest do not. No rate case has ever allocated this cost. No commission has approved the rate design. The undue prejudice is geographically concentrated, seasonally concentrated, and concentrated at night, when thunderstorms do most of their business. A customer in Florida has, through no fault of his own, been placed in a rate class of one, and the class pays in roof repairs.⁸

VI. The Penalty

The price of an unlicensed operation is set by statute. Under 16 U.S.C. § 825o-1, the Commission may assess civil penalties of up to $1,544,521 per violation, per day, for as long as the violation continues. The fleet makes roughly 68,000 deliveries a day. The arithmetic is left as an exercise for the Commission’s Office of Enforcement, which is respectfully informed that the arithmetic does not fit in this paragraph. What can be said is that no docket has been opened, no notice of alleged violation has issued, and no show-cause order has been served. The Commission has, in ninety years of administering the Federal Power Act, declined to assert jurisdiction over the weather. The enforcement record is a matter of public record in its absence.⁹

VII. The Defense

It must be stated plainly, because the statute states it plainly. The Federal Power Act’s jurisdiction attaches to a “person.” Section 3 of the Act, at 16 U.S.C. § 796(4), defines “person” to mean an individual, a partnership, a corporation, a municipality, a political subdivision, an agency, and their various successors. It does not mean weather. The definition of “public utility” requires a person who owns or operates facilities subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission. Lightning owns no facilities. It might be argued that the bolt is the facility, but Section 205 regulates rates and charges “made, demanded, or received” for transmission and sales. Lightning makes no charge, demands no payment, and receives nothing. The section that would put a price on the discharge is the section that requires a price to be filed. There is no price. There is nothing to file.¹⁰

Nor does the jurisdictional hook hold. The Act reaches transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce and expressly reserves to the states the transmission that is not in interstate commerce. A cloud-to-ground bolt transmits its energy entirely within the airspace of a single state. Even under the broadest reading of the Commission’s authority, its jurisdiction would attach only to the bolt that crosses a state line mid-flight, and no bolt has been observed to do so with the requisite intent, because bolts have no intent. The statute requires a person, and it does not have one.¹¹

The statute requires a person. It does not have one.

VIII. Conclusion

The Federal Power Act gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission jurisdiction over the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce. Section 205 requires every public utility to charge only just and reasonable rates, set by a filed schedule, with no undue preference or advantage to any person. Approximately 25 million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes transmit electricity through the American atmosphere every year at voltages of 100 to 300 million volts and currents above 30,000 amperes. A single bolt carries peak power on the order of a terawatt. The combined nameplate capacity of every generator on the United States grid is 1.28 terawatts. Lightning is responsible for more than thirty percent of the country’s power outages and 8,294 of its wildfires in 2025. The penalty for operating outside the regime is up to $1,544,521 per violation, per day.

Not one bolt has filed a rate schedule. The Commission has never opened a docket. The largest unmetered electric utility in the country operates almost entirely at night, during thunderstorms, without a tariff, and pays nothing.

Ergo.