A generator step-up transformer ordered in the United States in the second quarter of 2025 was quoted at 143 weeks on average, per Wood Mackenzie’s T&D supply chain survey published October 15, 2025. A substation power transformer was quoted at 128 weeks and medium-voltage switchgear at 44. In 2021 the average transformer took about 50 weeks. The Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor carries both readings, with the Department of Energy’s pre-pandemic “under a year” as the baseline.
Source: Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor (compiled from Wood Mackenzie survey figures via NIAC and Wood Mackenzie research, DOE LPT report; as of October 2025)
The chart reads 52 weeks before 2020, 50 in 2021, 120 in 2024, 138 in the first quarter of 2025 and 128 in the second, with the GSU point at 143 and switchgear at 44; the rows and their sources are in lead-times-by-class-2020-2025.csv. Every number below is dated and linked, and the piece covers the survey behind the 143 weeks, the demand and price series under it, the 82% import share and the single steel mill, the six announced US expansions and the one that discloses units, the backlogs that put recovery past 2028, how factory slots are actually bought, and, behind the wall, the six buyer types ranked by who gets delivered first.
The Numbers Behind 143 Weeks
Wood Mackenzie’s survey is the only public series that tracks US transformer lead times by class, and it is paywalled, so every figure here is as reported in the firm’s own notes or in the federal reports that quote it. In April 2024 the firm wrote that lead times had gone from around 50 weeks in 2021 to 120 weeks on average in 2024, with large substation and GSU units ranging from 80 to 210 weeks. The President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council repeated those numbers in June 2024 and added that one US large power transformer plant had disclosed a five-year wait. The Department of Energy’s July 2024 resilience report put it in months: 36-month lead times commonly quoted, 60 months at the maximum, against under a year before COVID-19.
The October 2025 note is the first to show any easing at the top of the range. Power transformers fell 10 weeks quarter over quarter to an average of 128 weeks in Q2 2025, GSUs eased slightly to 143, and switchgear edged down to 44, while pad-mount single- and three-phase transformers, reclosers, and wire and cable all recorded steady increases. The easing is at the large end, where renewable developers are the marginal buyer and their pipeline is shrinking. The tightening is at the small end, where every data hall, every plant expansion and every storm restoration competes for the same pad-mount.
Prices did not ease. The BLS producer price index for power and distribution transformers stood at 351.2 in August 2025 against 200.3 in December 2019, a 75% increase, and it has not posted a December-to-December decline in any year of the run. Our Equipment Price Benchmark treats this series as the ceiling reference for any transformer quote dated 2025.
Source: BLS PPI WPU117409 via Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor
Read back, the index rose 36% in 2021, 19% in 2022, 4.5% in 2023, 1.3% in 2024, and 1.8% in the eight months to August 2025. Wood Mackenzie’s survey basis says the same thing by class: unit prices up 45% for GSUs, 77% for power transformers and 78 to 95% for distribution transformers since 2019. Its April 2024 note added that GOES prices had nearly doubled since January 2020 and copper was up about 50%, and that suppliers kept raising prices after raw materials eased because the order book let them.
Demand Tripled, Supply Sat Still
The demand side is not a forecast; it is a count of orders already placed. Wood Mackenzie estimates that since 2019 US demand rose 116% for power transformers, 274% for generator step-up units and 41% for distribution transformers, and that 2025 supply runs 30% short for power transformers and 10% short for distribution units. The firm’s August 13 opinion piece gives the distribution deficit as 6% and the distribution demand range as 30 to 80% by specification; we print both figures because the two Wood Mackenzie documents disagree. Behind the growth: US electricity consumption up 7% since 2020 after a 1% decline from 2010 to 2020, a data center pipeline above 125 GW in Q1 2025 adding 226 MW a month, and solar deployments up more than 400% since 2019.
Source: Wood Mackenzie, Transformer troubles (August 2025) and Mind the gap (October 2025), redrawn
The bars read 274% demand and 45% price for GSUs, 116% and 77% for power transformers, 41% and up to 95% for distribution units, which means the smallest units carry the largest price increase for the smallest demand shock. The reason is the input side: distribution cores are nearly all GOES, and GOES nearly doubled from January 2020.
The Census Bureau’s M3 survey shows the same queue in dollars. Unfilled orders at US electrical equipment makers (NAICS 3353: transformers, switchgear, motors, generators) stood at $26.7 billion in July 2025 against $4.7 billion of monthly shipments, a 5.7-month backlog, up from $14.2 billion and 4.0 months in December 2019 and $8.7 billion and 2.6 months in January 2015. The ratio peaked at 7.1 months in October 2022 and has sat between 5.5 and 6.2 months for two and a half years. The 171-day capex lead time that ISM reports for capital equipment overall is a third of what a transformer buyer faces; the Lead-Time Monitor launch note explains how we combine M3, ISM and the OEM guides into one monthly table.
Source: Census M3 NAICS 3353 via Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor
The line averaged 3.0 months from 2015 through 2019, crossed 4 months in December 2019, 5.5 in January 2022, peaked at 7.1 in October 2022, and printed 5.7 in July 2025. Shipments rose from $3.3 billion a month in January 2015 to $4.7 billion in July 2025, so the industry is producing 41% more in dollars and still shipping less than one fifth of its order book each month. Our Book-to-Bill League Table shows every listed OEM booking more than it ships; the Census aggregate says the same thing for the whole sector.
Eighty Percent Imported, Steel Included
The domestic base was small before the boom. In 2019 the Commerce Department counted 137 large power transformers built in the US for US use, 18% of the total, against 617 imported units, 82%, out of roughly 750 units of demand above 60 MVA. Commerce estimated total domestic capacity at about 343 LPTs a year running at about 40% utilization, which means the plants were not full; they were short of people and steel. DOE’s survey of 87 component makers found 89% reporting trouble hiring, with labor averaging 36% of manufacturing cost. Wood Mackenzie’s 2025 estimate is that imports supply 80% of US power transformers and 50% of distribution transformers.
Source: DOE Large Power Transformer Resilience Report (July 2024); Wood Mackenzie (August 2025); NIAC (June 2024)
The bars read 82% of LPT units imported in 2019, 80% of power transformer supply and 50% of distribution supply imported in 2025, 80% of core steel imported in 2019, and a NIAC target of 50% domestic LPT share by 2029 from an estimated 20% today. Hitting that target would require domestic output to rise faster than a demand series that grew 116% in six years.
The steel is the harder constraint. Grain-oriented electrical steel and continuously transposed copper conductor are each about 25% of a large transformer’s production cost, and about 80% of GOES was imported in 2019. Cleveland-Cliffs, through its 2020 purchase of AK Steel, is the only active US GOES producer and can meet 12 to 20% of domestic demand; ATI shut its GOES line in 2016 and imports rose 155% the next year; the highest grade, domain-refined PDR, comes from one company, Nippon Steel. We laid out the width and loss numbers for that mill in One Steel Mill Gates Every US Transformer on October 12. A US transformer plant that wins a hiring battle still buys four of every five tons of core steel from Japan and Korea.
Trade policy raised the price of that steel in the same quarter the survey eased. On August 19, 2025 the Bureau of Industry and Security added 407 HTS codes to the Section 232 steel and aluminum derivative list, effective August 18, 2025, and the annex includes 8504.23.00 (liquid dielectric transformers above 10,000 kVA), 8504.33.00, 8504.34.00 and the 8504.90 parts lines that cover imported cores and laminations. The Section 232 copper proclamation published August 5, 2025 covers the winding side. Wood Mackenzie’s October read is that the tariff effect could be upwards of 20% for some products and will increase competition for domestic production slots. Our Tariff Exposure Calculator prices the stack by HTS line and origin, and the tariff bill of materials we published October 10 walks a substation package through it line by line.
Six Expansions and One Unit Count
Every large OEM has announced a US expansion since February 2024. We compiled the six US transformer announcements with a dollar figure and a first-output date into one table; Wood Mackenzie’s count for all of North America since 2023 is $1.8 billion.
Source: Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor (compiled from vendor releases, Utility Dive, APPA, Action News 5; as of October 2025)
| Vendor | Site | Investment | Announced | First output | Disclosed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Siemens Energy | Charlotte, NC | $150M | Feb 2024 | early 2026 | 24 to 57 new LPT/yr, 12 to 24 refurbished/yr |
| Eaton | Jonesville, SC | $340M | Feb 2025 | 2027 | 700 jobs; no units |
| Hitachi Energy | VA, MO, MS components | $250M global, >40% US | Mar 2025 | 2025 to 2027 | 100+ US jobs; no units |
| Hyosung HICO | Memphis, TN | $51M | May 2025 | 2025 to 2027 | 123 jobs; no units |
| Hitachi Energy | South Boston, VA plus Alamo TN, Bland VA, Mount Pleasant PA | $1B incl. $457M LPT plant | Sep 2025 | 2028, ramping | 825 jobs; no units |
| GE Vernova / Prolec GE | Goldsboro, NC plus US and Mexico sites | $300M+ incl. $140M Goldsboro | Oct 2025 | 2025 to 2028 | 330 jobs; no units |
Table data: us-capacity-announcements.csv
The table totals about $2.1 billion of US announcements across six programs, with first output spread from early 2026 to 2028, and exactly one row that states units per year. Siemens Energy’s Charlotte plant, announced February 14, 2024 at $150 million, will produce 24 new large power transformers a year initially and 57 at full capacity, plus 12 refurbished units rising to 24, with the first transformers manufactured in early 2026. Against 750 units of 2019 demand grown 116%, roughly 1,600 units in 2025, Charlotte at full rate is ~5% of the market. That is the largest disclosed number in the table.
Hitachi Energy announced on September 4, 2025 a $1 billion US package including a $457 million large power transformer plant in South Boston, Virginia, $106 million for components in Alamo, Tennessee, $22.5 million for dry-type capacity in Bland, Virginia and $70 million for high-voltage components around Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, 825 jobs, operational by 2028 with a ramp. That followed a $250 million component investment announced March 10, 2025, more than 40% of it in Virginia, Missouri and Mississippi, inside a $9 billion global program.
Eaton’s $340 million Jonesville, South Carolina three-phase plant starts production and hiring in 2027. Hyosung HICO is spending $51 million and adding 123 jobs in Memphis and says it wants to be the largest LPT supplier in the country by 2027. GE Vernova agreed on October 21, 2025 to buy the other 50% of Prolec GE for $5.275 billion, a business with 10,000 employees, seven plants, five of them in the US, about $3 billion of 2025 revenue and $300 million of expansions under way including $140 million and 330 jobs in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
None of the last five releases states a units-per-year figure, measured against the standard Siemens Energy set in its own February 2024 release; the documents linked above are the entire disclosure. Our OEM Disclosure Scorecard scores that gap directly: does the vendor publish capacity in units, lead times, and backlog in dollars. Dollars without units tell a buyer nothing about when the queue shortens. $2.1 billion of announced US capacity carries one disclosed number, 81 units a year at Charlotte, against a market of roughly 1,600 large units.
Backlogs Say 2028 at the Earliest
The order books say the queue is still growing. GE Vernova reported on October 22, 2025 that Electrification orders rose 102% organically to $5.1 billion in Q3 2025 on revenue of $2.6 billion, and that the segment’s equipment backlog reached about $26 billion, up $6.5 billion year to date. Orders at roughly twice revenue is a book-to-bill near 2.0, our arithmetic on the two disclosed figures. The same release shows the turbine side of the queue: Gas Power equipment backlog and slot reservation agreements grew from 55 to 62 GW, with slot reservations rising from 25 to 29 GW as 12 GW were signed and 7 GW converted to firm orders. Every one of those gigawatts needs a generator step-up transformer, the class quoted at 143 weeks.
The Book-to-Bill League Table we published September 10 puts every electrical OEM on the same page, and the Book-to-Bill League Table model updates it each quarter. The pattern in October 2025 is uniform: Siemens Energy described US LPT lead times of up to five years when it announced Charlotte; Hitachi Energy is running the largest capacity program in the industry at $9 billion; GE Vernova is buying its transformer partner outright. Vendors expand when the book covers the plant, and the books cover the plants through 2028.
One class does clear earlier. Wood Mackenzie projects the GSU shortfall narrowing to about 140 units by 2030 from more than 700 in 2025, because the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut the renewable pipeline that consumed most GSUs, while the new plants come online. That is a shortfall of 700 units in one class in one year, a number to hold beside Charlotte’s 57. The gas turbine side is worse and later: Cummins and Caterpillar are sold out through 2028 per our genset allocation piece, and GE Vernova’s 29 GW of paid slots run to the end of the decade.
No public series shows US transformer lead times returning to their 2019 level before 2028: the two largest announced LPT plants ship in early 2026 and 2028, demand grew 116% in six years, and the sector holds 5.7 months of orders. Our Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule takes the Monitor’s class table and returns the energization month for a set of PO dates; at 128 weeks, a power transformer ordered in the last week of October 2025 lands in the second quarter of 2028.
How the Queue Is Actually Bought
Lead time is an average over buyers who paid to move up and buyers who did not. The instruments are public because the OEMs and the federal reports describe them.
Source: Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor (compiled from GE Vernova 8-K, Hitachi Energy, NIAC, DOE, APPA, Latitude Media; as of October 2025)
| Instrument | Who | Terms disclosed | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slot reservation agreement, turbines | GE Vernova | 29 GW of paid slots at September 30, 2025; 7 GW converted to orders in Q3 | GE Vernova 8-K, Oct 2025 |
| Reservation fee, one turbine | Two Kentucky utilities | $25M to hold a turbine for a 2030 COD | Latitude Media, Sep 2025 |
| Framework agreement, transformers | E.ON and Hitachi Energy | up to $700M; Hitachi reserves manufacturing capacity | Hitachi Energy, Jul 2025 |
| Multi-year commitments | European utilities | 5 to 10 year purchase commitments; capacity already reserved | NIAC, Jun 2024 |
| No long-term contracts | Most US utilities | 5-year capital budgets; only the first years are firm | NIAC, Jun 2024 |
| Shared spare inventory | Grid Assurance | 31 utility subscribers, 23 states; no LPT delivered yet | DOE, Jul 2024 |
| Refurbishment line | Siemens Energy Charlotte | 12 refurbished LPT/yr at start, 24 at full rate | APPA, Feb 2024 |
Table data: slot-and-commitment-terms.csv
Seven instruments, three price points: 29 GW of slots, one $25 million fee, one $700 million framework. The turbine market shows the mechanics most clearly because GE Vernova reports them every quarter: a slot reservation agreement is a paid option on a delivery position, and in Q3 2025 the company signed 12 GW of them and converted 7 GW to orders. Latitude Media reported in September 2025 that all three large turbine OEMs now require a reservation fee and that two Kentucky utilities paid GE Vernova $25 million to hold a turbine for a 2030 commercial date. Our companion piece, The $60 Million Deposit, follows the same money into datacenter equipment.
Transformers have the framework agreement instead. On July 28, 2025 Hitachi Energy signed a deal with E.ON worth up to $700 million under which it will deliver a considerable part of the transformers by reserving manufacturing capacity for the German utility. NIAC heard the same from the manufacturers a year earlier: European utilities have been making 5- to 10-year equipment purchase commitments and have already reserved significant manufacturing capacity, while most US electric utilities do not source transformers under long-term contracts, because a five-year capital budget is only firm in its first years and commissions frown on inventory. The buyer with a 10-year commitment holds the slot; the buyer with a 5-year budget holds the lead time.
The third instrument is the spare. Grid Assurance, owned largely by AEP, FirstEnergy and Berkshire Hathaway, has 31 utility subscribers across 23 states and keeps LPTs, breakers and bushings in storage, though as of DOE’s July 2024 report it had not yet delivered a replacement unit. Utilities told DOE they hold high-voltage spare LPTs equal to 116% of the units in the substations ORNL rated most crucial. WattStock’s FLEX concept, a single-phase modular unit that replaced a 400 MVA three-phase LPT in Houston in about seven days, found that two designs could stand in for 60% of North American substation LPTs and nine designs for 80% of GSUs; the program stalled for lack of funding. The fourth is refurbishment: Charlotte’s 12 to 24 refurbished units a year is the only disclosed used-unit capacity in the country.
What a Plant Buyer Does Monday
The buyer at the back of this queue is the one this publication exists for: a plant adding 20 MVA of service, a colocation developer on a 50 MW site, a municipal utility replacing a substation. Their common trait, per NIAC, is that they buy after design, without a long-term commitment, in one-off ratings. Each of those traits has a fix with a number attached.
Place the transformer order before the site closes and before the single-line is finished, with a release-to-manufacture date written into the PO. At 128 weeks, a PO placed the week of October 27, 2025 delivers in the second quarter of 2028; every month of design the order waits on moves energization a month. The Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule puts PO dates against the Monitor’s class table and returns the critical path and the temporary-power cost of the gap.
Size to a rating that more than one mill builds, and write the impedance and the cooling class into the RFQ as ranges rather than single values, so a second bidder’s standard unit qualifies. The Transformer Sizing and Cost tool returns MVA, impedance and the published lead time by class from load and voltage; NIAC’s fifth recommendation is standardization across the 80,000 designs in service, and WattStock’s arithmetic (two designs for 60% of substation LPTs) shows how much of the catalogue is variation for its own sake. A standard rating can be bought from Charlotte, Goldsboro, Memphis or South Boston. A custom one is bought from whichever plant has a slot.
Ask for the slot in writing and budget the fee. The turbine market prices a reservation at $25 million for a single 2030 unit; a transformer buyer should expect a deposit against a delivery position and should carry it as a line in the capital budget, refundable against the PO. Ask each bidder for its refurbished-unit availability while the RFQ is open; Charlotte’s line is the only one disclosed, and the Quote Check tool shows what a compliant transformer quote must state, including the factory slot month. Price the quote against the Public Bid-Tab Price Book bands and the 75% PPI move before signing, and run the origin through the Tariff Exposure Calculator, because a Korean or Mexican unit now carries the August 2025 Section 232 derivative duty on its steel content.
Ask the GSU question even if the plant has no generator. The class that eases first is the generator step-up, because the pipeline that was buying it is shrinking: Wood Mackenzie’s projected drop in the GSU shortfall from more than 700 units in 2025 to about 140 by 2030 means cancelled renewable projects will release delivery positions on 34.5 kV to 138 kV step-up units over the next two years. A plant with a 115 kV service and a substation transformer in that range should ask every bidder whether a cancelled position exists before accepting the 128-week average.
Check the utility’s own transformer queue before yours. The substation transformer on the utility side of the meter is on the same 128-week list, and the Large-Load Cost Table records the realistic energization year each utility is quoting for a 50 MW connection in 15 markets. A plant that orders its own unit on time and waits on the utility’s has bought nothing.
Behind the paywall: the six buyer types ranked by queue position, with the disclosures that put each one there; why the 29 GW of paid turbine slots already own the GSU line; the four moves, frame agreement, reservation fee, refurbished unit and spec change, with the clause each one needs; and the Lead-Time Monitor class table the ranking is built on.