题图：在弗吉尼亚州的一家工厂里，日立能源公司的一名员工正在检查将要安装到变压器内部的铜线圈。

In a factory not far from the North Carolina state line, Robin Cisco walks her fingers across hundreds of feet of paper-insulated copper wire.
在北卡罗来纳州州界附近的一家工厂里，罗宾-思科用手指抚过数百英尺长的纸绝缘铜线。

Cisco is a “winder” at Hitachi Energy’s transformer factory in southern Virginia where she twists wire by hand around a giant cylinder. The pattern will eventually create the heart of an electric transformer that takes four to six weeks to build and is the size of a small garage. Soaring demand means the wait list for the crucial equipment is yearslong.
思科是日立能源公司弗吉尼亚南部波士顿变压器工厂的一名“绕线工”，她手工将导线缠绕在一个巨大的圆柱体上。最终这些导线将构成电力变压器的核心部件，其制造周期为四至六周，成品体积相当于一个小型车库。激增的需求意味着这种关键设备的等待时间长达数年。

The growth of the U.S. electric grid depends on factory workers like Cisco, whose craft can take three to five years to master and can’t be fully automated. The manual precision and specialty materials required are among many reasons that the U.S. is struggling to meet the surging electricity needs of the artificial-intelligence frenzy.
美国电网的发展依赖于思科这样的产业工人，这门手艺需要三到五年才能掌握，且无法完全实现自动化。所需的手工精度和特种材料，是美国难以满足人工智能热潮所引发的电力需求激增的诸多原因之一。

“Believe me when I say that they are artists,” Anthony Allard, head of North America for Hitachi Energy, said of winders. “This is an extremely manual job because they have to be extremely precise in the way they do it. If not, there will be some issue later down the road with the equipment.”
日立能源北美区负责人安东尼-阿拉德谈及绕线工时表示：“请相信，他们是真正的艺术家。这是项对手工操作要求极高的工作，因为他们必须确保操作过程极度精确。否则，设备后期就会出现问题。”

Transformers are used to step up voltage from power plants to send electricity onto the grid, or to step down voltage so it can be used by cities, neighborhoods and large customers such as factories, data centers and oil-and-gas facilities. New ones are needed every time a new source of power generation or a big customer connects to the grid.
变压器用于将发电厂电压升高后输送至电网，或降低电压以供城市、社区及工厂、数据中心、油气设施等大型用户使用。每当新的发电电源或大型用户接入电网时，都需要安装新的变压器。


插图：用于绕制的铜线。罗宾-思科正在检查用特制绝缘纸包裹的手工绕制铜线。

They can be as large as buildings or as small as garbage cans. The ones made in South Boston can weigh up to 285,000 pounds, roughly the equivalent of 24 elephants or 65 pickup trucks.
其尺寸可以大如建筑物，亦可小如垃圾桶。南波士顿工厂生产的变压器重量可达28.5万磅，约等于24头大象或65辆皮卡车的重量。

Orders for larger transformers have exceeded supply by about 14,000 units this year, according to Wood. Similar labor and supply-chain hurdles are slowing the construction of natural-gas-fired power plants and gas turbines, which have a yearslong backlog.
据伍德麦肯兹公司统计，今年大型变压器的订单量已超出可供应量约1.4万台。类似的劳动力和供应链障碍也拖缓了天然气发电厂和燃气轮机的建设进度，相关订单积压已长达数年。

The South Boston factory, which already has three shifts, is expanding. Construction has also begun on a new $457 million facility in an adjacent field, where Hitachi Energy will make even bigger transformers beginning in 2028.
已实行三班制的南波士顿工厂正在进行扩建。相邻地块上亦已动工建设一座耗资4.57亿美元的新工厂，日立能源将从2028年起在该厂生产更大型号的变压器。

A potential bottleneck: hiring around 800 more workers, including winders, in a county with a population of about 34,000.
一个潜在的瓶颈是：在这个人口约3.4万的县城，需要再招募约800名工人，其中就包括绕线工。

Settling into her role as a winder took Cisco about a year. “I still have my days,” said Cisco, who is 65 years old and has worked at the South Boston factory for nearly 15 years. “That’s the first thing I tell my trainees: This job is not for everyone.”
思科适应绕线工这一角色花费了约一年时间。“我至今仍有状态起伏的时候，”现年65岁、在南波士顿工厂工作近15年的思科坦言，“这是我培训新员工时说的第一句话：这份工作并非人人皆宜。”

Working nearby, winder Derrick Petty said he is still learning the quirks of the job after a year at Hitachi Energy and 14 years at another transformer factory.
在附近工位操作的绕线工德里克-佩蒂表示，尽管在日立能源工作已满一年，且此前在另一家变压器工厂有14年经验，他仍在摸索这项工作的独特之处。

“This is not like a hamburger joint,” Petty said. “These aren’t cookie-cutter coils. No two people and no two coils are alike. I’ve seen people come in here—and walk away.”
“这里可不是汉堡店，”佩蒂说，“这些线圈不是模具压制的标准化产品。每个人手法不同，每个线圈也独一无二。我见过有人来这儿——然后转身就走。”

Pay for manufacturing jobs at the South Boston factory starts at $19.33 to $24 an hour, approaching the county’s median household income of about $49,200, according to 2023 census estimates.
根据2023年人口普查数据，南波士顿工厂制造岗位的起薪为每小时19.33至24美元，接近该县约4.92万美元的家庭收入中位数。


插图：玛丽莎-埃默曼正在缠绕电缆。大型电力变压器的散热器正在被移至指定位置。工具和材料的培训展示。

Marissa Emerman, who started at the factory in October as a first-assembly manufacturing associate and was taping cables on a recent afternoon, said the role was intimidating at first—but it pays $4 more an hour than her previous position as a manager of the local animal shelter.
玛丽莎-埃默曼于10月份入职这家工厂，担任初级装配制造助理，其人表示这份工作起初令人望而生畏——但时薪比她之前担任当地动物收容所经理时高出4美元。近日午后，她正在从事电缆缠绕作业。

When friends and family ask her what she does, Emerman tells them she works on a bigger version of “the green boxes we sat on as kids that we probably should not have been sitting on,” she said. “Now I know better.”
当亲友问起她的工作时，埃默曼会告诉他们，她所操作的是“童年时我们可能不该坐上去的那些绿色箱子的放大版”。她说：“现在我总算明白了其中原理。”

Current flows through transformers similarly to water between larger and smaller pipes. After winding, the copper coils are lowered by crane around a magnetic core made from hundreds of stacked sheets of millimeters-thin electrical steel. It is the path of the coil as copper twists and turns that converts the voltage from high to low—or low to high—as current flows by mutual induction.
电流流经变压器的原理，类似于水流在粗细不同的管道间传输。绕制完成后，铜线圈由起重机吊装至磁芯外围——该磁芯由数百张毫米级厚度的电工钢片叠压而成。正是铜线圈蜿蜒曲折的路径，通过互感作用使流经的电流实现电压升降。

The end product is a hulking gray, steel box that holds nine to 12 windings—a total of about 9 miles of copper that would stretch the length of 160 football fields.
最终成品是庞大的灰色钢制箱体，内含9至12组绕组——总计约9英里长的铜线，足以铺满160个标准足球场。

Smaller distribution transformers—mounted on pads or poles to help deliver power to neighborhoods and businesses—face an even greater supply crunch. Wood Mackenzie pegs this year’s shortage at about 123,000.
体型较小的配电变压器——安装在基座或电线杆上，为社区和企业输送电力——正面临更严峻的供应短缺。据伍德麦肯兹测算，今年此类变压器的缺口约为12.3万台。

Those transformers are produced in factories that can churn out hundreds of pieces of equipment a day thanks to some automation, though they, too, require hands-on labor and designs vary from customer to customer.
得益于部分自动化生产，这些变压器的制造工厂每日可产出数百台设备，但它们同样也需要人工操作，且设计规格因客户需求而异。


插图：大型电力变压器正在进行最后的组装。

The U.S. will import 80% of its needed large power transformers this year and half of its distribution transformers.
美国今年所需的大型电力变压器将有80%依赖进口，配电变压器的进口比例也达半数。

Manufacturers in the power industry had little reason to boost output until recently because electricity demand was mostly stagnant in the two decades before 2020.
电力设备制造商此前长期缺乏增产动力，因为在2020年之前的二十年里，电力需求基本处于停滞状态。

Now, it is expected to surge 25% between 2023 and 2030, according to consulting firm ICF, largely thanks to data centers and industrial growth. The Energy Department and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab expect data centers to consume as much as 12% of the country’s electricity by 2028.
咨询机构ICF预测，2023年至2030年间电力需求将激增25%，这主要得益于数据中心和工业增长。美国能源部与劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室预计，到2028年数据中心耗电量将占全国总用电量的12%。

For transformers of all sizes, sourcing additional materials such as grain-oriented electrical steel and high-purity, insulated copper wire is difficult, as is increasing factory output and hiring, said Benjamin Boucher, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie.
伍德麦肯兹公司高级分析师本杰明-布歇指出，对于各类变压器而言，获取取向电工钢和高纯度绝缘铜线等额外材料十分困难，提升工厂产能和扩大招聘同样面临挑战。

“Transformers require very technical labor, but we just don’t have enough of that these days,” Boucher said.
“变压器制造需要高度专业化的技术工人，但当前这类人才严重短缺，”布歇表示。