Only Germany and South Korea produce for export. Worldwide production is less than 100 per year and serves the rapidly growing markets of China and India. The first practical application of the transformer was invented in the USA by William Stanley, but largely as a consequence of American trade policy (“It doesn’t make any difference whether a country makes potato chips or computer chips”- attributed to Michael Boskin, Chairman of President George H W Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors) there is little manufacturing capability remaining in the USA. The lead time between order and delivery for a domestically manufactured HV transformer is between 12 and 24 months, and this is under benign, low demand conditions. The great majority of these units are custom built. If the HV transformers are irreparably damaged it is problematic whether they can be replaced.

The simultaneous loss of just 9, in various combinations, could cripple the network and lead to a cascading failure, resulting in a “coast-to coast blackout”. HV transformers are the weak link in the system, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has identified 30 of these as being critical. HV (high voltage) transformers-transmitting voltages of greater than 100 kV-are what make it possible to send electricity over great distances to thousands of substations, where smaller transformers reduce the voltage. With these limitations in mind, we proceed. Moreover, the underlying physics and technology involved-the electrical engineering and materials science-is likely beyond the understanding of the reader, and certainly beyond that of these writers. The studies for and against EMP, other than for limited testing of a few components of the infrastructure by the EMP commission, are based not on physical demonstrations but mathematical models and simulations.

Much of the knowledge on these matters is classified.

Evidence for and against the validity of each of these threats follows below. The power grid is posited to be vulnerable to geomagnetic storms generated by solar activity, electromagnetic pulses (EMP, also referred to as HEMP) produced by high altitude nuclear detonations, cyberattack, and kinetic (physical) attack. Testimony given by the Chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, while expressing similar concerns, gave no estimate of the deaths that would accrue from a prolonged nationwide grid collapse. There is no published model disclosing how these numbers were arrived at, nor are we able to validate a primary source for this claim. In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid-through starvation, disease, and societal collapse-could result in the death of up to 90% of the American population.

North american power grid map