Transformer Shortage Crisis: Can New Engineering Solve It?

To Nick de Vries, chief technology officer at the solar-energy developer Silicon Ranch, a transformer is like an interstate on-ramp: It boosts the voltage of the electricity that his solar plants generate to match the voltage of grid transmission lines. “They’re your ticket to ride,” says de Vries. “If you don’t have your high-voltage transformer, you don’t have a project.”

Recently, this ticket has grown much harder to come by. The demand for transformers has spiked worldwide, and so the wait time to get a new transformer has doubled from 50 weeks in 2021 to nearly two years now, according to a
report from Wood MacKenzie, an energy-analytics firm. The wait for the more specialized large power transformers (LPTs), which step up voltage from power stations to transmission lines, is up to four years. Costs have also climbed by 60 to 80 percent since 2020.

About five years ago, de Vries grew worried that transformer shortages would postpone his solar projects from coming online, so he began ordering transformers years before they’d actually be needed. Silicon Ranch, based in Nashville, now has a pipeline of custom transformers to make sure supply chain problems don’t stall its solar projects.

The company isn’t alone in its quandary. A quarter of the world’s renewable-energy projects may be delayed while awaiting transformers to connect them to local grids, according to the Wood MacKenzie report. In India, the wait for 220-kilovolt transformers has
leaped from 8 to 14 months, potentially holding up nearly 150 gigawatts of new solar development.

And it’s not just renewable-energy projects. The transformer shortage touches utilities, homeowners, businesses, rail systems, EV charging stations—anyone needing a grid connection. In Clallam County, the part of Washington state where the
Twilight movies are set, officials in May 2022 began to deny new home-construction requests because they couldn’t get enough pad-mounted transformers to step down voltage to homes. To address the backlog of customers who had already paid for new electrical service, the utility scrounged up refurbished transformers, or “ranch runners,” which helped but likely won’t last as long as new ones.

The ripple effects of the shortage touch both public policy and safety. When a transformer fails from wear and tear, gets hit by a storm, or is
damaged by war or sabotage, the inability to quickly replace it increases the risk of a power outage. The European Green Deal, which plans for an enormous build-out of Europe’s transmission network by 2030 to accelerate electrification, is imperiled by the protracted wait times for transformers, says Joannes Laveyne, an electrical engineer and energy-systems expert at Ghent University, in Belgium.

For power engineers, this crisis is also an opportunity. They’re now reworking transformer designs to use different or less sought-after materials, to last longer, to include power electronics…