Meanwhile, behind the scenes, members of Congress made a last-ditch and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get federal dollars to increase transformer production.

Transformers are like trust: months or years to build, seconds or minutes to destroy.

The failure to squeeze the transformer request into the $1.7 trillion public funding bill that Congress is expected to send to President Biden today has disappointed utilities and their supporters after more than 6 months of working with the Biden administration to justify the need for support.

“We got a little lost in this turmoil. This is a real blow,” says Alex Strong, a lobbyist for the National Home Builders Association, whose members are running out of transformer boxes on the street. “Development is stalled because of this bottleneck in the supply chain,” Strong says.

Since the advent of modern electrical grids, millions of transformers on street poles and switchyards have bolstered the practicality of AC. Transformers regulate voltage from tens to hundreds of thousands of volts, allowing electricity to be transmitted with low losses, and 100-120 volts, which power household appliances more safely.

Yet nearly 140 years after they were invented, transformers remain a lot like trust: they can take months or even years to build and seconds to minutes to destroy.

Projectiles penetrating their hulls can release or ignite the heat transfer oils that protect their complex coil windings from overheating, often resulting in irreparable damage. This can be a paralyzing weakness during the growing attacks on Transformers.

In Ukraine, Russian barriers destroy several transformers almost daily. This has made transformers the most sought-after technology in the country after Western missile systems. And this forced the network operators of Ukraine to apply for spare parts to their foreign colleagues.

A shoemaker works with a flashlight during a power outage in Lviv on December 16, 2022, after Russian strikes were carried out on energy infrastructure. Yuri Dyachishin/AFP/Getty Images

Deliberate attacks on power grids are also worrisome in the US. The shooting that ripped out an accidental transformer casing on a pole five years ago is increasingly destroying substation transformers that can weigh more than 200 tons and power districts or entire cities.

Coordinated gun attacks on a pair of Duke Energy transmission substations in North Carolina made headlines this month, shutting out about 45,000 people for up to four days. But in just the past two months, deliberate damage to substations has led to blackouts across the US, including in the second region in North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon and Washington. All remain unresolved.

Suicide necklaces on neo-nazis

The scale of hostile shutdowns in the US pales in comparison to Ukraine’s suffering. But there are some unfortunate commonalities. In both countries, the substation attacks appear to be designed to spread chaos and fear, and are at least partly motivated by antipathy that ranges from reckless to outright revenge.

High-powered rifle shots knocked out an American Electric Power substation in Centerburg, Ohio, last month, shaking nerves already stirred by alarming headlines in February. That same month, in a Columbus court, an Ohio man and two other men pleaded guilty to a white supremacist conspiracy. Originating from an online chat in 2019, it was targeted at several substations in the US, according to the US Department of Justice.

“During this year, we have seen increased interest due to extreme weather conditions. Once the Duke incident happened, everything switched to physical attacks.”
— David Rupert, CEO of Grid Assurance

The conspirators “expected the damage to result in economic disruption and civil unrest,” said Timothy Langan, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, in a February 2022 press release that also cited their “commitment to racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist views” .

Each defendant was assigned to hit a substation in a different region of the US. They had the necessary weapons, as well as “suicide necklaces” soaked in the powerful drug fentanyl.

Six months after Columbus’s incorporation, federal authorities learned that a “suspected white supremacist” had posted “the exact coordinates of more than 75,000 U.S. substations” online, according to cable news network NewsNation.

Attacks and alerts increase utility interest in programs that give them access to a shared inventory of transformers and other critical equipment. “We are seeing increased interest. We have about half a dozen potential new subscribers,” says David Rupert, CEO of Columbus-based Grid Assurance, the newest piece of equipment in the US.

“Before the Duke Energy incident, we saw increased interest during this year due to extreme weather conditions. As soon as the incident with the Duke happened, everything switched to physical attacks, ”says Rupert.

Grid Assurance was inspired by a 2013 sniper attack that disabled 17 large transformers at a substation near San Jose. Since it began operations in 2020, the organization has signed 31 utilities across 23 states. It stores large transformers, circuit breakers and other components used in transmission systems and releases them if subscribers are subject to physical attack, cyberattack, or extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes.

The pooling of resources provides an insurance policy against major events that are not expected to occur frequently in any one firm. But Rupert says bigger and closer production will improve safety. More limited stocks mean longer delays to replace stocks that could be destroyed by a major incident that caused widespread destruction, such as a massive solar storm or an electromagnetic weapon attack.

Large transformers purchased by Grid Assurance in 2020 and delivered 18-24 months later require up to 39 months to replace today. To make matters worse, Rupert says 70 percent of its transformers are made outside of North America. None of them are made in the USA. “It’s very important to convey as much of that as possible,” he says.

Requires electrical steel

A February 2022 report from the Idaho National Laboratory examined the issues contributing to transformer shortages and focused on one key component: grain-oriented electrical steel. This is the grade required for compact and efficient transformers, it is produced by only one company in the US, and a study by a national laboratory has shown that its quality and quantity are insufficient. As a result, domestic manufacturers serve only a fifth of the demand for transformers in the United States – mostly small devices that power several houses or blocks.

The study identified funding and coordination under the Defense Production Act (DPA), enacted in 2021 to deliver medical supplies to combat COVID-19, as a key opportunity to expand domestic production of grain-oriented steel and transformers, and as well as other network components, including circuit breakers and switchgears. The Biden administration approved the use of the DPA in June, as did the joint government-industry Tiger Team.

So did some Democrats in Congress, offering $2.1 billion to increase production of transformers and related network equipment, which they say is critical to realizing the potential of the recent Inflation Reduction Act to boost renewable energy production. As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said in an interview IEEE Spectrum last week: “To move the electrons in which [IRA] invests, we need a lot of manufactured electrical equipment, including transformers.”

After all, lobbyists say the DPA’s proposed funds have simply been crowded out by other priorities. For now, this leaves the utilities free to create their own solutions.

One distribution operator in North Carolina certainly did so after the Duke Energy attack this month. The next morning, Randolph Electric Membership Coop crews from Ashborough and neighboring utilities were building interconnection lines to intact substations, and the following evening, three kilometers of upgraded and new lines carried enough power to serve several thousand customers on an uninterrupted basis. , restoring access to gasoline, groceries and other services.

A little help from friends

Creativity and courage have certainly been shown by the network engineers in Ukraine, who are putting together everything they can to restore the power that has been knocked out by every Russian shelling. Last Friday, when the engineers got to work, power supplies were cut by more than half, despite the fact that the Ukrainian air defense system shot down 60 of the 80-90 missiles fired. The next day, President Zelensky announced that grid operators had already supplied electricity to almost 6 million people again.

Of course, there was still a lot of work ahead. “There is still a lot of work to be done to stabilize the system. There are problems with heat supply, big problems with water supply,” Zelensky said.

Several shellings since the weekend have done more damage.

One hopeful sign that Russia is striking civilian infrastructure is the recent surge in spare parts coming from abroad. DTEK, the energy conglomerate that distributes most of the electricity in eastern Ukraine, received its first equipment last week, including 36 transformers from Zurich-based equipment supplier Hitachi Energy.

Other distributors benefit from 250 transformers donated by the Lithuanian electricity and gas supplier ESO, which were delivered earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Ukrenergo could procure equipment for its power grid thanks to more than 400 million euros in loans and grants from European governments last week.

More good news comes from Ukrainian estimates of another dwindling stockpile: Russian missile stockpiles. The National Security and Defense Council estimates that Russia has enough weapons left for “a maximum of two or three, maybe four more” massive strikes.