Why Your Town’s Next Blackout Could Last Months: the Giant Transformer at Its Power Station Now Takes Up to Four Years to Replace

Ten o’clock on a Tuesday night, the gate locked for hours...

...and a man stood by himself in the dark.

He was at the fence of our county’s biggest substation.

He wasn’t lost, and he wasn’t up to anything.

He was facing the giant transformer inside the fence the way you’d face a grave.

I’ve driven the night rounds out there for sixteen years.

What he told me that night needs saying out loud before it comes true here.

The job’s simple.

I check the gates, the fence line and the yard lights.

Then I drive on to the next yard.

After a while you stop seeing what’s behind the fence.

Even a gray steel transformer two stories tall, humming all night.

I’d passed that one ten thousand times without once really looking at it.

That Tuesday a man in a dark jacket stood at the fence.

His back was to me, and he wasn’t moving.

So I took a picture of him from the truck before I got out.

That’s the way we’re supposed to do it.

The Man at the Substation Fence

He was tall, mid-sixties, silver hair cut short.

He stood straight, the way some men never stop standing.

“Sir, this is a closed site,” I said.

He kept his back to me. “You come by here every night?”

“Sixteen years now. I need you to get back in your car.”

His eyes stayed on the transformer. “You ever really look at this thing?”

“Sir...”

“It’s a simple question. Ever really looked at it?”

“I drive by it,” I said.

“Then you don’t know what happens to every house down that road if it goes.”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

Every Time One Gets Hit, They Promise It’ll Be Quick

He tipped his head at the big gray tank. “Most of this country’s power runs through big ones like this.”

“And every time one gets hit, people hear it’ll be fixed in no time.”

“California, 2013.”

“Men with rifles shot up seventeen of these in one night...”

“...and more than fifty thousand gallons of oil poured out onto the gravel.”

“They got lucky, because they could send the power around it.”

“It still took weeks to replace what got shot.”

Then he told me about a report to Congress.

It looked at a planned attack on eight stations like ours, in the right places.

That could black out four states and leave them crippled “for months.”

“And the government ran its own test,” he said.

“Lose nine of the right ones on a hot day...”

“...and the whole country could go dark, coast to coast.”

I looked at the transformer, and then at him.

“All right, so the big parts take a while.”

“Why are you out here at ten at night telling me that?”

“Because there’s one thing about these nobody talks about.”

Why There’s No Spare Waiting

“Every one of these is built by hand for the one spot it sits in,” he said.

“You can’t haul one over from the next county.”

“And nobody keeps many spares, because each one costs millions.”

“So when one goes, you order a new one.”

“In 2020 that took about a year...”

“...but today you can wait up to four years.”

“That’s what the group that oversees America’s power grid says.”

“One American factory told a council that advises the President it’s five.”

“And when it’s finally built, it can weigh more than 400 tons.”

“Fewer than 20 rail cars in the whole country can carry one.”

“Why so long now?” I asked.

“Because the giant computer buildings that run AI are buying up every one they can get.”

“One California power company told Reuters it now orders its big parts five years ahead.”

“The people who run the grid are planning for that out loud.”

“And nobody heard them.”

Who He Turned Out to Be

“Who are you?” I asked. “And why does it matter to you what I know?”

He seemed to weigh something, and then he turned his face away.

“Never mind. I’ve got no business being out here.”

He started back toward his car.

“No, hold on,” I said.

“You’re at a locked substation at ten at night.”

“And you’re telling a total stranger the power could be out for months.”

“Either you’ve lost your mind, or you know things I don’t. So which is it?”

He stood there a long time, and I could see his jaw working.

“Forty years building these,” he finally said.

He held out his phone and showed me an old picture from a factory floor.

“I wound the copper in some of the ones in this state.”

“I’m retired, but the men I trained still call me.”

“And what are they telling you?”

“The public version is, if one goes, you’re back on in a few days.”

“And the real one?”

He looked back at the transformer.

“If somebody takes out the right ones, it’s months. Maybe longer.”

My Lights Are On. So What’s the Problem?

I looked past the fence at the houses along the road, their porch lights on.

“Maybe it takes longer than they say,” I told him.

“But every storm, my power’s back in a few days.”

“And my lights are on right now.”

“So why should I lose sleep?”

He nodded, like a man who’d heard that line plenty of times.

“That right there is the worst thing you could believe.”

“A storm breaks the small stuff: a pole, a line, the little transformer on the pole.”

“Crews come from all over and swap it out.”

“When one of these goes, there’s nothing to swap.”

Then he walked me through it, slow.

“That night, you light candles and figure it’ll be back by morning.”

“By the end of the week the flashlights are dying.”

“The phones are dead, and the batteries are gone.”

“The gas stations can’t pump without power, so the generators run dry.”

“A month in, you’re in the pitch dark every night with no news.”

“You have no idea if it’s just us or the whole country.”

“And nobody can tell you when it ends.”

“You don’t notice it, and you don’t notice it, and then it hits you all at once.”

“That can’t happen here,” I said. “Not in America.”

“Puerto Rico is America.”

“After Hurricane Maria, the last neighborhood waited nearly 11 months for its power.”

“And that was a storm. Nobody was even trying.”

What the People Who Know Are Doing About It

“Then what’s a man supposed to do?” I said.

“I’ll tell you what the men I trained are doing.”

“Not what they say. What they do.”

“One put solar panels on his roof this spring.”

“He never told a soul at work.”

“Another sold his generator.”

“Said a generator’s no good when every gas station in the county is dark.”

“And the third keeps folding solar batteries in his truck, his wife’s car and his daughter’s house.”

“See what those three share?”

It took me a second. “The sun.”

“The sun.”

“Not one of them is counting on the grid or a gas can.”

“When the big one goes, the gas runs out and the batteries die...”

“...and the sun still comes up.”

“In every long outage there’s one house on the street with a light still on,” he said.

“That’s the man who planned for it.”

“Now picture your grandkids at your kitchen table in the dark.”

“The phones are dead, the flashlights too.”

“All you’ve got to hand them is a candle.”

The yard was dead quiet except for the hum.

What He Pulled Out of His Coat

He turned to go.

I could have let him leave, and I didn’t.

“So what does a regular family do? Put panels on the roof?”

“Not everybody can.”

“Then what?”

He thought for a moment.

Then he reached into his coat and pulled out something black, folded shut like a book.

He set it on the hood of my truck and opened it out...

...four solar panels in a row.

“It’s called a TerraCell,” he said.

“It’s a battery that fills itself back up from the sun.”

“It holds up to five full phone charges.”

“It’s got its own LED light built in.”

“And it’ll charge every phone in the house.”

“In the daytime you open it outside in direct sun.”

“It puts charge back every day the sun comes up.”

“Rain doesn’t hurt it. No gas, no engine, no noise, so it’s safe beside the bed.”

“One of the men I trained gave his mother one.”

“Then an ice storm took her power for five days.”

“Every sunny morning she set it out on her porch rail.”

“Whatever she’d used the night before, the sun put back by evening.”

“So every night she still had light and a charged phone, all five nights.”

“However long it stays dark, the family that has one isn’t sitting blind, waiting on the grid. They’ve got light, news and power of their own.”

“How come I’ve never heard of it?”

“They don’t sell it in stores, and it’s not on Amazon.”

“People hear about it the way you just did.”

“I carry one, there’s one in the truck and one at the house.”

“That one’s yours. There’s plenty more where it came from.”

He handed it over like you’d hand a neighbor a flashlight before a storm.

Then he walked to his car, and he was gone.

So I Tested It Myself

I drove home in the dark in dead silence.

Every porch light on my street was burning.

And for the first time in my life, I thought about how fast it could all go.

The next morning I opened the TerraCell on my truck’s tailgate in the sun.

That night I waited till my wife went to bed.

Then I switched off the main breaker for the whole house.

The fridge went quiet and the clock on the stove went dark.

I sat down at the kitchen table.

Then I switched on the TerraCell’s built-in LED light...

...and it lit the whole table.

Then I plugged my phone into it, and it started charging in the dark.

I sat a long while in my own dark house.

I had a light when I wanted one, and the news when I wanted it.

All I could think about was that man at the fence.

In the morning my wife came down and found me at the laptop.

She’d seen light coming up the stairs at midnight, with the breaker off.

“What’s all that?”

“I’m ordering more of these.”

She looked at the TerraCell on the table, then at me. “How many?”

“Four.”

“Make it six.”

When the first four came, I put a strip of tape on each one.

Each strip had a name on it.

A Week Later

That was a week ago.

Since then I’ve read everything I could find about what that man told me.

And it’s still getting worse.

This summer Reuters reported the wait for some giant transformers grew again.

If the news has stopped matching what your gut tells you, trust your gut.

The people who understand what a four-year wait means are already getting their families ready.

Quietly, and without asking anybody’s permission.

Every night I drive past that transformer and hear it hum.

And I think about how one bad night could stop it for months.

The one I marked Glove box rides in my wife’s car now, folded flat.

It’s there in case her car ever quits on a dark road.

TerraCell comes from Quiet Protector, a small outfit that sells it only on its own site.

When I looked this morning, they still had some.

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Since I Wrote This

My son-in-law is a contractor, and he thought I’d lost my mind.

So I went over to his house and switched off his breaker.

Then I lit his kitchen table with mine.

He went quiet for a good half a minute.

That night he ordered three.

What Families Say About TerraCell

★★★★★4.8 out of 5 from 2,184 reviews

★★★★★

“Five days without power after the ice storm. It sat on the porch rail every sunny morning. Every night, its LED light and our phones kept going.”

Bernice T.

★★★★★

“My mother is 91 and lives alone. Now there’s one by her couch. When the power goes out, she still has its light and the news. And I don’t lie awake worrying.”

Shirley M.

★★★★★

“My girls each live two hours from me, so each got one and I kept one. When the storm took our power last winter, all three houses still had light and power.”

Joyce A.

★★★★★

“Our generator ran dry and every gas station in town was dark. TerraCell kept our light and phones going until the power came back.”

Harold P.

★★★★★

“It’s out on my front steps through rain and sleet and works fine. I gave my sister one for her glove box. If her car dies on a dark road, her phone won’t.”

Annette D.

Why Stocking Up on Batteries Won’t Be Enough

Somebody will say, “I’ll just stock up on batteries.”

Fine.

A box of batteries is a countdown clock.

Every one you use is one fewer you have.

When the last one dies, your house goes dark with everybody else’s.

TerraCell isn’t a countdown, because it puts charge back every time the sun comes up.

Its four panels give it 4x faster sun charging than a one-panel solar charger.

The maker calls that Four-Panel Solar Capture™.

So your family has light, news and power of its own, however long the grid stays down.

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One for Every Person You’d Worry About

Remember those strips of tape with the names on them?

A TerraCell on my kitchen table does nothing for my daughter...

...when her lights go out across the county.

So think about everyone you’d lie awake over if your town went dark for months.

Your parents, above all one living on their own.

Your kids, wherever they happen to be.

And the car, for the night you’re far from home.

Each of them needs their own, so every house you love has its own light, news and power.

Even while everybody waits on a transformer that’s years away.

Maybe That Transformer Holds

Maybe it does. Maybe nobody ever takes a rifle to it.

Maybe it hums along for another forty years...

...and I hope it does.

Then your TerraCells still carry your family through ice storms and hurricanes.

Those still take the power for days.

But if it goes, nobody gets a new one for years.

You’ll want light, news and power in the house already...

...not on order the night it goes dark.

None of us can build a transformer or guard a substation.

But you can make sure your family isn’t sitting in the dark while everybody waits.

The Only Problem: Stock Can Run Short

More than 10,000 families keep one.

And when war or storms hit the news, more order at once.

If the button below still shows, there are units left.

Each comes with our 120-Day Money-Back Guarantee and a 1-Year Warranty.

You have 120 days to try it.

For any reason at all, every penny comes back to you.

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