EE News reported that US power infrastructure is crumbling due to unprecedented delays in procurement of large power transformers due to shortage of Grain Oriented Electrical Steels. A recent survey of American Public Power Association surveyed members has highlighted that delivery of new transformers was an average was about a year as compared with an average three-month wait in 2018.While US based transformer builders report difficulties in finding the highly skilled workers required to ensure compliance with stiff quality standards, transformer production is hampered by high global demand for the specialized steel and wiring it requires. That vulnerability is magnified by US utilities dependence on foreign suppliers of specialized electrical steel used in transformers as well as the manufactured units. In 2019, 82% of large transformers were imported, the DOE report said.Earlier that month, President Joe Biden declared that the Defense Production Act could be used to avert a shortfall in transformer availability that would severely impair national defense capability.There is only one US Company currently producing GOES, Cleveland-Cliffs with production plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Big River Steel, a US Steel subsidiary, is building a new plant to produce electrical steel in Arkansas, with a scheduled opening in 2024, but the product will be directed at electric vehicle production, not transformers
EE News reported that US power infrastructure is crumbling due to unprecedented delays in procurement of large power transformers due to shortage of Grain Oriented Electrical Steels. A recent survey of American Public Power Association surveyed members has highlighted that delivery of new transformers was an average was about a year as compared with an average three-month wait in 2018.While US based transformer builders report difficulties in finding the highly skilled workers required to ensure compliance with stiff quality standards, transformer production is hampered by high global demand for the specialized steel and wiring it requires. That vulnerability is magnified by US utilities dependence on foreign suppliers of specialized electrical steel used in transformers as well as the manufactured units. In 2019, 82% of large transformers were imported, the DOE report said.Earlier that month, President Joe Biden declared that the Defense Production Act could be used to avert a shortfall in transformer availability that would severely impair national defense capability.There is only one US Company currently producing GOES, Cleveland-Cliffs with production plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Big River Steel, a US Steel subsidiary, is building a new plant to produce electrical steel in Arkansas, with a scheduled opening in 2024, but the product will be directed at electric vehicle production, not transformers
