Updating the grid...

 The electrical grid in the U.S. is very reliable by most standards. Notwithstanding severe storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and such, the infrastructure is stable and dependable. Oddly enough, electricity consumption from 2010 to 2020 fell by 1%. Owing to modern innovations such as LED's, efficient motors, stricter appliance standards, the electrical needs of the country went flat for a number of years. This became the norm, until it wasn't. 

The electrical utility industry experienced no growth for over two decades. The financial and practical circumstances surrounding this absence of growth resulted in little to no funding for apprenticeship programs, no training of personnel with specialized skills, and recruiting only to replace those lost to retirement and attrition, if that. The industries that support electrical utilities did the same. Manufacturers of transformers and electrical equipment, steel mills, were all planning based on requirements they had seen for decades. 

Beginning in 2020, electricity consumption has reversed two decades of decline and increased by 7%. Demand for large power transformers, the equipment through which nearly all of America's electricity passes through has surged 116% since 2019. The updating and expansion of power generation, data centers, grid expansion for increased population sparked big increases in demand all within a few years. The utilities and support industries apparently didn't see this coming and were not prepared. 

Roughly 80% of the large power transformers in the United States are now imported. The grain-oriented electrical steel required inside the transformers has but a single domestic producer. Lead times for a standard power transformer have stretched to nearly two and a half years, and even longer for the larger units that connect power plants to the grid. Prices for these critical components have increased more than 77% since 2019. The average transformer in use today is 38 years old, more than 70% of the fleet is more than 25 years old. The utility is finding themselves in the unfortunate position of trying to replace an aging base and build a completely new one with a supply chain that has been neglected for a generation. 

The hardware shortage gets a lot of attention. The human shortage is worse because it can't be expedited. At the present time, there is nowhere in America a person can enroll to learn how to design or build a large power transformer. The few university power engineering programs that still exist don't teach it. Such programs were shrinking before the boom began as students began to turn their interest to software and AI. 

The knowledge to wind a coil, design a core or run a high-voltage acceptance test is a learn-by-doing skill, taught on a shop floor by master winders, test engineers or metallurgists who understand why a core behaves the way it does. This kind of expertise lives in people, rarely written down. Considering that roughly half the utility workforce is now over 45 and a large share of them expected to retire in this decade. A new transformer factory can be built in a couple of years. You cannot create an experienced winder in a couple of years, not can you enroll one either. 

This is the situation no one in the industry planned for. Industrial capability cost nothing to lose and is wickedly expensive to rebuild. It took only 18 months of supply chain stress to expose the gap. It will likely take as much as two decades to close it. Every credible forecast indicates demand climbing through 2050. The impending result: disruption of service. 

The electrical grid and its supporting industries must be treated as growth industries once again. Meaning manufacturers must create new facilities and production lines with the demand forecasts to support them. Apprenticeships, training and recruiting must reflect that of high growth industries once again. Domestic material suppliers must retool and increase production capacity to meet orders. Capital investment must be directed to electrical capacity not just to the data centers that capacity will serve. 

Most of all, it means recalibrating from the status quo that 'worked' for the past 20 years. The industry landscape has shifted and electrical providers must shift with it, in real time. I'm sure many other countries are experiencing the same dilemma.

The Spanish Migration Problem

 This past week tens of thousands of Moroccans swam into the Spanish enclave of Ceute on the African coast within days of the Spanish Supreme Court ruling that no one entering by sea could be denied entry. This follows the launch of a unilateral illegal alien amnesty program by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Sanchez's program has generated more than a million applicants, twice that which was originally estimated. 

There were other factors feeding the crisis. Morocco likely allowed it to happen to pressure Spain on another matter, perhaps to attempt to reclaim the territories taken long ago as part of the Reconquista, Spain's centuries-long war of liberation against its Muslim occupiers. Morocco may have pushed the issue a little too far though; a smaller migrant rush was apparently shut down at Melilla, Spain's other African foothold. This kind of weaponization has been practiced as a form of one-sided war by weaker powers, e.g Turkey, Belarus, Cuba and others. 

The other reason migrant weaponization is effective against Western countries to begin with: the dysfunctional and outdated asylum policies left over from the Cold War.  Those limited policies morphed into pipelines allowing mass illegal immigration. These illegal aliens will request asylum and be supported by Spanish taxpayers until their asylum cases are decided, and even those rejected are not likely to be deported. 

The EU's recent migration pact was presented as a tightening of border controls, but in effect, it will serve to require other EU members to take their "fair share" of the illegals Spain has allowed in. Italy's Prime Minister has threatened to suspend the Schengen Agreement, which allowed passport-free border crossing in Europe. It will be interesting to see how Hungary (who supports strict external border controls) will accept its share of Moroccans illegals.

The timing of the Spanish Supreme Court's ruling on open borders stands in irony to our own Supreme Court's decision just days prior that allowed the president to physically prevent foreigners from crossing the border. Three of our justices that dissented on that judgment shared the suicidal view of their Spanish colleagues, that asylum law in effect applies to foreigners who aren't even in your country yet. 

If there is a saving grace to be founding this latest crisis, it may be that those who chose to violate Western sovereignty may be pushing the limits too quickly. Spain is sending the military to Cueta to restore order, though it remains to be seen whether their mission will be to push back or simply ensure an orderly process. But there is reason to hope given the EU's blessing of Poland's strong efforts to stop forced migration from Belarus. The EU has a big migration problem and it's going to take big measures to bring it under control. Hopefully before the 'collateral damage' becomes unbearable...