Electric transformers aren’t something most people think about unless one attached to the power lines serving their home or business is damaged resulting in a power outage. Most of the time power is back on quickly indicating that the transformers were not the problem. It takes longer to replace a transformer damaged beyond repair.
And that can be a problem if large numbers of transformers are damaged at once such as occurred in the recent California wildfires. That’s because the waiting time for new transformers is now 127 weeks.
In case you don’t know, transformers are typically used to bring down voltage. Utilities use high voltages to transfer electricity long distances because it’s more efficient. The electricity voltage must then be “stepped down” to the level that most homes and businesses use.
It turns out American trade policy is complicating matters for the American grid. The Build America, Buy America provisions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed under the Biden administration require substantial and in some cases 100 percent domestic content for goods and services used in a wide range of federally funded infrastructure projects including maintenance and expansion of the electrical grid. And, few infrastructure projects move forward without at least some federal contribution. Unfortunately, America only produces about 20 percent of the equipment it needs for its electrical power and transmission system.
Even if the United States were not restricting supply of these goods through Build America, Buy America requirements, there would still be long waiting times. In fairness to those who passed the infrastructure bill, the waiting time for a new transformer back then was 50 weeks—not particularly fast, but far better than today’s wait of over two years for most transformers and now even four years for specialized transformers.
What’s happened is a perfect storm for manufacturers in the form of quickly increasing demand. “Aging grid infrastructure, new renewable-energy generation, expanding electrification, increased EV charging stations, and new data centers all contribute to the rising demand for these machines,” according the IEEE Spectrum. And that demand is coming from all over the world including fast-growing Asia, a European Green New Deal, and America’s huge infrastructure spending that includes large sums for expanding green energy and readying the grid for that expansion.
The world’s largest makers of transformers are increasing production, but those increases will take years. In addition, many transformers are customized for a particular installation. Naturally, it tends to take longer to produce these more complicated transformers, and they cannot by definition be standardized for mass production.
One more danger lurks in the background. Transformers are vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses, whether produced by a solar storm or by an atomic weapon. The possibility of using an atomic weapon exploded high in the atmosphere to create a powerful electromagnetic pulse has forced militaries across the world to harden their warfare equipment including aircraft and communication gear to withstand what would otherwise be a crippling electronic blackout, one that could take aircraft out of the air and bring communications to a halt.
Nothing comparable has been done for civilian infrastructure which means, even if we humans avoid a nuclear war, an intense solar storm could someday produce similar devastation by shutting down most of the grid. The need in that case will be new transformers. But there simply won’t be millions of spare ones sitting around to replace the damaged ones. A world without electricity would quickly become a death trap for most of its inhabitants.
In case you are wondering, the last solar storm capable of such devastation occurred in 1859 before the advent of our modern electrified civilization. Even as we attempt to expand greatly our current grid to meet the presumed needs of artificial intelligence and green energy generation, we should ask ourselves whether taking some additional precautions to shield us from the known catastrophic danger of electromagnetic pulses might be warranted.
Comments
We changed commenting systems on September 10, 2026 as part of a site-wide functionality and security upgrade. Your past comments have not disappeared, and you can still log in with your old Disqus account credentials if you wish. Contact us with any questions.
"A world without electricity would quickly become a death trap for most of its inhabitants." I wonder whether this is true. Humans don't require electricity for survival–we lived without it for 99.99% of our existence. (We'll let go that most of Earth's inhabitants are not human, and don't have electricity–I understand he just means humans.) Yes, we now have a vast overpopulation of humans, half of them living in dense cities where life requires all manner of machinery. I think the ability of humans to exit cities and take up an older way of life is underestimated by many–but in this case we're talking about a very sudden event, where the electricity in a vast area disappears literally overnight (or overday). That would be much more challenging than the perhaps more likely scenario where gradual decay of our social, political and infrastructural systems allows a gradual return to a world where a much higher percentage of us farm, often as peasant farmers primarily growing for their own use.
Anyway, given the realities of the Great Unraveling/Turning/Simplification, whatever you want to call it, rather than investing in hardening our current system, we'd be better off transitioning to a simpler, more distributed (rural) set of arrangements, where most of us are not dependent on electricity (or motorized transport) for survival. But that would be an even bigger transition and it wouldn't make the rich richer, so I guess we "can't."
My husband and I began to pay attention to energy costs in 2000 when natural gas prices quadrupled and our winter heating bill quadrupled. We moved into a new home in 2004 and began the process of improving energy efficiency with the goal of eventually replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.
It was an interesting path to greater energy self-sufficiency. Now we live in an earth berm home that is all electric and powered by PV system. Last Dec. we replaced our gas powered vehicles with EVs. Our PV system generates enough energy to power both our home and our vehicles. Our monthly energy bill is $10.60 because we remain connected to the electric grid.
Interestingly, an earth berm home is highly energy efficient. If our power went out and our batteries were dead, our home would maintain temperatures between 45F and 75F even without heating or A/C system running. Our garage is underground but not heated or cooled. Even when the temperature outside is 95F (feels like 105F) our garage does not get warmer than 75F. In winter, no matter how cold it is outside the garage remains well above freezing.
There are passive ways to heat and cool the space in which we live. Just as there are ways to feed our family that don't require a grocery store. People are resilient. They will figure it out sooner or later. Our home could be easily heated with firewood and require no furnace. We can easily adapt to eating little to no meat. It's all about necessity!
I became aware of the transformer bottleneck a few years ago when snipers attacked power transformers near us in San Jose. I was surprised at how long it would take to manufacture replacements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
This incident was covered in Ted Koppel's book Lights Out. The collective reaction is "yawn"
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246944/lights-out-by-ted-koppel/
The only time Americans pay attention to electricity is when it goes off. When storms hit and power outages happen….Americans care. With respect to longterm thinking, sadly Americans don't give such concerns much mental bandwidth.