Originally Posted By: SAFisher
Originally Posted By: Dagny
Talk about a stimulus program, we'd all be put to work building transformers.


The shocking thing is that there are not enough transformers, so, without electricity, you can't build more -- and you can't get electricity without tranformers. It's a cascading effect situation that would be hard to recover from. Yikes.


Although electricity is needed in the factories that produce transformers, this need not be grid power.
I would expect such facilities to receive a very high priority in the allocation of either generators or rationed grid power.
I believe that some factories have large generators, employed normally for testing purposes, these could of course be used to power the factories.

It would appear prudent for the government to subsidise the manufacture of a few spares, not throughout the nation but at a few key locations.
Since such large transformers are not easily or quickly transported, the spares should be held on site at the most important substations.
(some spares already exist, since although long lasting, they do sometimes fail in normal use)

Limited grid power can be supplied by much smaller transformers than the originalls, rolling blackouts being used to avoid overloading the smaller ones.
Smaller transformers can be made more quickly, and may be available from stock, unlike the largest which are built to order.