U.S. SENATE News:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, along with U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) are requesting $2.1 billion in Disaster Supplemental Funding to address the severe and ongoing supply shortage of electrical transformers and complementary grid security technologies through the Defense Production Act (DPA).

The transformer shortage is the result of a number of overlapping dynamics, from the recent COVID-19 supply shocks to the decades-long trend of outsourcing manufacturing abroad.

The senators wrote to the leadership of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees:

“From our ability to protect against cyber-attacks, intentional electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks or a naturally occurring geomagnetic disturbance, to our capacity to respond to foreign supply-chain disruptions, the current shortage puts America’s national security at risk, weakens the resilience of our electrical grid, and jeopardizes our decarbonization goals.

“We therefore strongly urge the Committee to include $2.1 billion in the Disaster Supplemental Funding to expand domestic manufacturing of transformers and grid components, including electrical steels, flexible transformers, circuit breakers, switchgear or substation to serve load and interconnect generation, and inverters and optimizers to integrate the influx of distributed generators,” .

The full text of the letter is available here.