John Maclaga, Assistant Director for North Carolina public power utility Wilson Energy, recently met with House members to discuss the supply chain challenges faced by the electric power sector.

During the meeting, which was convened by the bipartisan Supply Chain Caucus, Maclaga detailed the exponential increase in lead times and prices for transformers, utility poles, bucket trucks, and other critical equipment since the start of the pandemic. He called on Congress and regulators to ensure that the federal government supports the development of more robust supply chains and onshoring of manufacturing of critical infrastructure components. Maclaga also urged the lawmakers to appropriate money in orders of magnitude of billions of dollars to give manufacturers a chance.

Maclaga also detailed what Wilson Energy has done to address supply chain challenges, which includes working with ElectriCities of North Carolina to do more joint purchasing and making a push for more standardization when it comes to buying transformers. Additionally, Wilson Energy has been using AMI and GIS systems to look at where they have transformers that are underused or overused. Pre-pandemic, it was not economical to keep old transformers, but now, they are not scrapping anything unless it can't be safely turned on.

Source: publicpower.org