Believe it or not, there is a magazine dedicated to electric transformers, and an article warns that there is a serious and growing shortage of spare transformers and that supply chain issues have extended the time from ordering a transformer to its delivery from a few weeks to as much as a year.
Power companies have issued warnings about dangerous transformer shortages in the USA.
US power companies are raising the alarm about a potential energy crisis. Transformers are crucial to the grid because they change the voltage of electricity to make it usable. However, energy trade groups warn that the nation can’t count on aging transformers to keep the power on. Also, if transformers blow during storms, it could take more than a year for power companies to get new ones due to the supply chain shortage. ERMCO estimates that, in case a storm blows enough transformers in a city with no reserves, it could take several weeks to bring the lights back on.
Mike Partin, president and CEO of the Sequatchie Valley Electric Cooperative, says there is a supply chain problem putting USA at risk because it could take 52 to 56 weeks to get new transformers instead of the typical 4-week turnaround from manufacturers.
Even without the forced electrification of everything being pushed by the Biden Administration, the forced transition of our electric supply to net zero greenhouse gas production, and the introduction of less reliable power generation the basic infrastructure that keeps the lights on is aged and vulnerable to shock. And if that shock comes in the form of a shortage of transformers the likelihood that the power would get restored quickly is far too low for comfort.
Now add in the Biden Administration variables–a massive expansion of everything electric, reduced reliability of power generation, and new standards for transformers to increase efficiency and you may be facing a perfect storm.
As lead times on new transformers grow longer, utilities are also worried about the nation’s ability to make new ones because transformer cores use a specific type of steel called grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES). Most GOES manufacturers are outside of USA.
The Department of Energy wants to expand USA’s production by using a more efficient kind of steel for transformer cores called amorphous steel. Amorphous cores are part of the DOE’s proposed energy-efficiency standards for transformers which they estimate could cut energy waste and slash 340 M metric tons of carbon over the next 30 years.
Increased efficiency is great, if you can actually deliver it without crashing the grid we depend on currently.
Not that this matters to the Biden Administration or Energy Secretary Granholm, who is dead set on electrifying even the military. Practical considerations like something being even possible matter not in the least, because in her world everything runs on fairy dust and unicorn farts.
She is focused on a future that may never be and ignores the present where interruptions in basic services are truly life and death. Forget for the moment elevators, lights, information technology, manufacturing, and the myriad other things that depend on reliable electricity; without refrigeration being available food supplies will plummet rapidly in any major urban area. And if the grid goes down in winter freezing to death would be on the table.
Americans are so used to basic things working consistently that we ignore them; policymakers often pursue pie-in-the-sky projects without ensuring that the things that make modern life possible simply work.
This is Bidenomics in a nutshell: demand something be done (electrify everything) and stand in the way of anything getting done. Throw money at the people you like and call it a day. Collapse follows, but your friends get rich.
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