As Congress and the Biden administration engage in discussions regarding end-of-year measures to fund the government and invest in national infrastructure, community-owned electric utilities serving nearly 2,000 towns and cities across the U.S. have raised a critical concern. The American Public Power Association (APPA), representing these utilities, strongly advocates for H.R. 4167, the Protecting America’s Distribution Transformer Supply Chain Act.

This legislation, introduced by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), seeks to postpone the Department of Energy's (DOE) plan to enhance conservation standards for distribution transformers. APPA believes that delaying these standards is crucial to enable manufacturers to meet the growing demand for transformers and uphold the electrical grid's reliability.

Public power utilities and the communities they serve were alarmed when the DOE announced a notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) in December 2022, proposing changes to conservation standards for distribution transformers. The proposed stricter standard would necessitate a shift from grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) to amorphous steel. However, this shift would disrupt existing investments in production and materials, necessitating a complete overhaul of manufacturing production lines and exacerbating the transformer shortage.

The proposed efficiency standards and the analyses referenced by DOE to comply with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) do not withstand scrutiny. In reality, these standards would exacerbate the already severe distribution transformer supply shortages. DOE should reconsider the NOPR immediately or delay its implementation until the transformer supply chain strengthens, increasing supply, reducing costs, and expanding the number of component suppliers.

The electric sector is grappling with a supply chain crisis that has hampered its ability to meet the demands for maintaining and expanding the electrical grid. The Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council, of which APPA is a member, has identified several underlying causes of the production shortfall, including a lack of an available and adequately trained labor force and sufficient materials for immediate production increases.

Source: pv-magazine.com