Hitachi to double US production of small and medium-sized power transformers | Hacker News Reader

Hitachi to double US production of small and medium-sized power transformers

utilitydive.com

I read about Solid State Transformers https://www.powermag.com/the-solid-state-shift-reinventing-t... with some interest. However they have some weird failure modes. At least large chunks of metal twisted around large chunks of a different metal are predictable and don't need firmware updates.

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_16.html

Solid state transformers are a misnomer: Traditional transformers are already solid state - no moving parts. And SSTs do the actual voltage / current transformation using a smaller, higher frequency traditional transformer. A more appropriate name for SSTs would be high frequency transformers or IF (intermediate frequency) transformers or something.

A traditional transformer doesn't use semiconductors for power conversion and chunks of metal are not "solid state" despite being solid. Call it a hybrid transformer if you want, but the name seems pretty settled. The more relevant part of my comment is that introducing semiconductors and software control into a device formerly only able to operate in a few very predictable ways will lead to both greater flexibility and also new and exciting failure modes.

What's the top V these cretins will reach? Can they reach 10-20kV? Can they be "stacked" ?

IIUC the real bottleneck is in transmission (>50kv) not distribution transformers.

It seems like solid-state transformers aren't entirely stupid - they can be smaller and lighter and control phase angle (to control power flow direction and power factor) like HVDC connections do. But their efficiency is less than the 98-99% of the traditional big hunks of copper and steel, so until that improves, they likely won't see widespread use.

Yeah, it's all stacking. Lots and lots and lots of IGBT in series. Now though they have pretty advanced gate control, to build "Modular Multi-Level Converter (MMC)", switching various groups of modules on and off to approximate a sine wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter#Modular_Multi-L...

Fun facts: the Trans-Bay Cable is credited by wikipedia at least as the first MMC implementation. Started ~2003, permitted 2007, completed 2010, the cable is 53 miles, and runs at 230kV, providing reliable power to SF; a response to a critical 1998 power outage when two local power plants shut down (since decomissioned for good) and the grid failed to carry the load. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_Bay_Cable

Coincidentaly, the original patent expired in 2003, so uh, interest may have started rising recently. None the less, thanks Rainer Marquardt and Anton Lesnicar for your MMC invention. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1304403

Ironically, "solid-state drive" was also misleading, because "solid-state" was an industry marketing term to differentiate anything using exclusively semiconductors from any older technologies, such as vacuum tubes. So a standard HDD, based entirely on semiconductors and not vacuum tubes, would indeed be "solid-state" by those standards, but I for one understood a "solid-state drive" to be differentiated by no moving parts. Vacuum tubes did not, per se, move a lot. Not like an HDD platter or head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_electronics

Also regarding child comment, how did we already get to slurs for those with developmental disabilities? Can we avoid those, please?

So solid-state effectively means semiconductor based, but also not based on things that aren't semiconductors, depending on context...

Solid-state drives do indeed not contain non-solid-state critical parts, but solid-state transformers do.

Yes, a solid-state motor starter uses semiconductors (thyristors) to switch the line voltage power instead of using (an) electromagnetic contactor(s): https://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/products/industrialc...

I assumed it was a typo and they were actually referring to "cretons", a type of French-Canadian potted pork.

There are no solid state electronics or semiconductors in basic AC transformers, it’s an iron core with aluminum windings coated with enamel and wrapped in paper with a bit of wire and some taps and lugs for terminations.

It's been taking about a year to get 500kva-5000kva transformers and big 480V switchgear. Things never really recovered from covid. The AI buildout certainly hasn't helped things but it's amazing how long this problem has been around.

> Things never really recovered from covid. The AI buildout certainly hasn't helped

“Lead times, or the time taken between an initial order and its delivery, for some high-voltage transformers have increased to multiple years from around a year in 2020 and 2021’ [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-power-companies-s...

From what I've read, it has something to do with Russia targeting transformers in Ukraine. Since transformers are usually highly reliable, unexpected needs for replacements are a problem.

I suppose they manufacture distribution or transmission transformers, I buy a lot of dry-type transformers and have never seen a Hitachi one, it’s almost always a Siemens/ABB/Square D/Eaton/Hammond.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/08/17/magazine/tran...

A fascinating glimpse of how much complexity underpins our modern world actually works. Obviously they must have factories for these things, but I hadn't considered the supply chain there.

I'd only heard of it in the context of a solar flare blowing out all the transformers and we'd be SOL

It's been a huge problem in Ukraine. The Russians have been targeting the large ones, and it's been a large part of their blackouts. To the extent they protect key ones with patriot batteries. But apparently no one manufactures them anymore on the continent. Or like, they produce one or two a year. So the euros have had to gift their spare ones. It's quite an interesting story

Russian troops are not acts of God, but acts of war. I believe that GP is thinking of interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME), which is among the potentially disruptive forms of space weather: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection#Impact_o...

But sabotage by earthbound troops is of a different character. Disruption by space weather could happen in peacetime, or anywhere, and could disrupt many vulnerable devices simultaneously, or even be blamed on hackers or enemy action.

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