Under DOE's regulations, energy efficiency gains will be achieved with 75% of the transformers on the market being manufactured with grain-oriented electrical steel and another 25% being manufactured with amorphous alloy, a lesser-used electric steel core material.
Manufacturers will be given five years to ensure total compliance with the regulations.
Fox News The new standards are a scaled-down version of regulations first proposed by the DOE in January 2023, under which 95% of distribution transformers would have been required to be made with amorphous alloy, and manufacturers would have three years to comply.
Ted Cruz and Sherrod Brown which would require the DOE to preserve market opportunities for transformer manufacturers.
Brown said that GOES accounts for more than 95% of the domestic distribution transformer market, while amorphous steel relies on foreign materials, while there's just one small producer in the US. Therefore, per Brown, rapidly ramping up reliance on amorphous steel could create a vulnerability in the US power grid.
"The final rule provides stability for most of the market, while affording a more gradual shift toward tighter efficiency standards for transformers used to meet larger commercial and certain electrification loads," said Louis Finkel, the senior vice president of government relations for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.
In a press release, Cleveland-Cliffs applauded the rule, saying in a statement that "Cleveland-Cliffs and the United Auto Workers worked collaboratively to educate the DOE on the shortcomings of the originally proposed distribution transformer rule and the danger of relying on Amorphous Metal, which is produced in very limited volumes and exclusively from imported materials."
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