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Transformer Sizing and Cost
Load, voltage class and impedance to MVA, price band from the Bid-Tab Price Book and published lead time from the Monitor.
Method
Load, voltage class and impedance to MVA, price band from the Bid-Tab Price Book and published lead time from the Monitor.
Defaults come from the model named above. Every input is mirrored to the URL so a scenario can be shared as a link. Results are indicative; the model page states the sources and their dates.
Default assumptions come from the Public Bid-Tab Price Book. Pro subscribers can save inputs. Institutional seats get the underlying series.
Articles that use this calculator
What 50 MW Costs in 15 US Markets
A 50 MW connection requested in Northern Virginia this quarter energizes in 2033, after posting $75 million of collateral and signing for 14 years. The same 50 MW in Houston posts no rule-mandated security, signs no minimum-take contract, and can be live in…
How to Write an RFQ for Capital Equipment in 2026
The City of Ocala, Florida agreed to pay $8,070,340 for two 105 MVA autotransformers in August 2023 and approved $9,170,340 for the same two units on April 28, 2026, seven months before the first one arrives. The $1.1 million difference is one clause: a PPI…
The 2% Funnel: 474 GW Requested, 9 GW Approved, 5.8 GW Energized in ERCOT
Governor Abbott's August 3, 2026 letter to the PUCT and ERCOT put the number at "approximately 474 gigawatts of requests to connect to the Texas grid," more than five times ERCOT's 85,508 MW peak record, about 90% of it data centers. ERCOT's own status table…
The $60 Million Deposit: How Equipment Slots Became Datacenter Currency
One GE Vernova 7HA.02 is 384 MW. At the ~$790/kW that BNP Paribas estimates GE Vernova is now getting for a heavy-duty turbine (July 2026), that one machine is ~$300 million of equipment, and the 20% reservation payment that holds a production slot for it is…
Who Gets the IEEPA Refund
Ford told analysts this morning that it booked a $1.3 billion one-time benefit for IEEPA tariffs it paid between March 2025 and February 2026 (Ford Q1 2026 call, April 29, 2026). A plant that bought a German switchgear lineup last November and paid a 15%…
Behind the Meter, In Front of the Queue: 90 GW Announced, 2 GW Running
Datacenter developers have announced about 90 GW of behind-the-meter generation across 59 US projects, and about 2 GW of it runs, which is 2.2%. Another 1.2% is under construction, 36% holds an air permit, and 60% exists as a press release. The same month…
The 2 MW Plant Service Upgrade Nobody Budgets Right
A 400-person plant adding 2 MW of service pays for five things the switchgear quote never mentions, and together they run $400k to $1.2M with one month of bridge power. The calendar is worse than the money: run the project the way most plants run it, utility…
The Used and Refurbished Market Nobody Indexes
Fifteen vendors bid on the same 2,500 kVA pad-mount transformer for Fayetteville's public utility in September 2025 and the unit prices ran from $41,200 to $101,253, a 2.5x spread on one spec sheet, with quoted lead times from 10 to 35 weeks. The dealer that…
The OEM Disclosure Scorecard: Who Tells Buyers Anything
Twelve of ninety cells. That is how many times one of the eighteen largest electrical, power and cooling OEMs selling into US factories and datacenters publishes, in a form a buyer can open without an account, one of five things a buyer needs: a dated lead…
Why Your Switchgear Costs 50% More Than in 2021
The BLS producer price index for switchgear and switchboard manufacturing stood at 394.8 in July 2026, 78% above January 2021. Wood Mackenzie's survey puts medium-voltage switchgear at +50% since 2021 and circuit breakers at +47%, as reported by POWER…
Transformer Lead Times Hit 143 Weeks: Who Gets Delivered First
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…
Quote Check: What Your Switchgear Quote Should Have Said
Riverside Public Utilities paid $2,254,387.50 for one 15 kV metal-clad switchgear lineup in May 2025. The median public award for a 5 to 15 kV metal-clad lineup in the Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book is $1,481,321 across 12 awards from five utilities…
One Steel Mill Gates Every US Transformer
Every pound of domestic grain-oriented electrical steel in a US transformer core is melted in one electric arc furnace in Butler, Pennsylvania, at a plant with 0.3 million net tons of configured raw steel capacity and a maximum finished coil width of 920 mm.…
Tariff Bill of Materials: What Sections 232 and 301 Add to a UPS, a Lineup, a Genset and a Megapack
A 1 MW UPS assembled in the United States from the parts a US OEM actually buys carries about 17 points of federal duty in its ex-works price. The same UPS imported finished from China carries 55. The "50% copper tariff" that every quote now cites is 3.8 of…
Introducing the Large-Load Cost Table: 15 Markets Side by Side
Fifteen utilities, eight tariff cells each, and 45 of the 120 cells have no published number. That is the honest headline of the Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table, which launches as version 0.1: for a 50 MW connection in fifteen US markets, the study fee,…
Introducing the Public Bid-Tab Price Book
On March 19, 2024, Fayetteville Public Works Commission in North Carolina opened twelve bids for four 2,500 kVA three-phase pad-mount transformers and the unit prices ran from $64,285 to $219,000, a 3.4x spread on one stock number, with quoted lead times…
The 171-Day Capex Lead Time: ISM's Most Ignored Table
The average manufacturing buyer now commits to capital equipment 171 days ahead of need, and 27% of them commit more than a year out. Those two numbers sit in the Buying Policy table on the last page of the ISM Manufacturing Report On Business, below the…
Book-to-Bill League Table, Q2 2026: Every Electrical OEM
Powell Industries booked $934 million of switchgear orders in the quarter to June 30 2026 and shipped $312 million, a book-to-bill of 3.0. That is the top of the table. The bottom of the table is Eaton at 1.2, and Eaton is the only one of eight…
Introducing the Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor
A low-voltage switchgear section ordered from Schneider Electric today is quoted at 50 weeks from release to manufacturing, per the September 2026 edition of Schneider's Lead Times Guide, published September 2. That number is one of exactly four equipment…