The United States is on the verge of a major energy crisis due to the weak safety system in high-voltage transformers at substations. According to the article's author in The National Interest, Siddhartha Kazi, there has been an increase in deliberate sabotage of electrical substations in the U.S., which is the main reason for outages at these facilities.
In late December 2022, four substations in the vicinity of Pierce and Washington were attacked, resulting in power outages for 14,000 people. Prior to that, an unknown individual shot at two substations in North Carolina, leaving 40,000 people without electricity for several days. Similar incidents occurred in November in Oregon and Washington.
Kazi explained that high-voltage transformers make up 3 percent of the U.S. energy infrastructure, generating 70 percent of the country's electricity needs. If 9 out of 30 transformers were to fail during peak demand, it could result in a complete blackout from coast to coast. He noted that the bigger problem lies in the long time required for factories to produce replacement parts for high-voltage transformers, which can take several months, while replacing damaged transformers could take up to two years.
He asserted that given this situation, and without the perpetrators being brought to justice, organized sabotage groups could disrupt the U.S. power grid within hours. Furthermore, the biggest issue is that the United States lacks the capacity to produce high-voltage transformers, despite there being five U.S. companies claiming to manufacture them, with unknown production numbers. As a result, 85 percent of high-voltage transformers in the U.S. are imported from South Korea and Germany, the only two countries that produce them for export.
