America’s emerging electricity challenge is increasingly an infrastructure challenge. For much of the energy transition, attention concentrated on the cost of producing electricity. Solar developers focused on module prices, battery developers compared cell costs and round-trip efficiency (RTE), and utilities evaluated competing resources using measures such as levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Those calculations remain important, but artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing and electrification are exposing another constraint. Generating additional electricity is only the beginning. That electricity must also be transmitted, transformed, switched, protected, controlled and reliably delivered to the customer at the time and place it is required.
COMMENTARY
This shift places substations, transformers, circuit breakers, protective relays, controls and switchgear much closer to the center of America’s energy strategy. On August 26, 2026, President Donald Trump accelerated that change by declaring a national emergency concerning risks associated with certain foreign-produced equipment used in the U.S. bulk-power system. The Executive Order identifies equipment including substation transformers, high-voltage circuit breakers, protective relaying, metering equipment, industrial control systems, voltage regulators, grid-connected inverters and battery energy storage systems. It also extends attention beyond physical hardware to software, firmware, digital services and remote-access capabilities.
For the power-equipment and electrical-infrastructure industries, this is more than a cybersecurity or procurement issue. Combined with rapid load growth, aging infrastructure and growing concern about supply-chain security, it could help create an important domestic market for new equipment, substation modernization and long-term lifecycle support.
Energy Security Changes the Value of Electrical Infrastructure
The August Executive Order should not be interpreted as a blanket prohibition on all foreign electrical equipment. Its focus is the bulk-power system and transactions involving foreign-produced equipment that may pose unacceptable security, sabotage, remote-access or supply-chain risks. Nevertheless, the policy represents an important change in the way electrical equipment may increasingly be evaluated.
Electrical infrastructure has traditionally been judged by electrical performance, reliability, standards compliance, cost, lead time and service support. Those criteria will remain fundamental, but equipment provenance, firmware integrity, component sourcing, communications architecture, remote access and long-term supply assurance may now carry greater weight. The Executive Order also authorizes the Department of Energy (DOE) to establish procedures for recognizing equipment and vendors as pre-qualified for future transactions.
That could provide American manufacturers with a competitive advantage extending well beyond the location of the factory. A supplier able to demonstrate trusted components, secure digital architecture, transparent firmware, dependable replacement parts and long-term domestic support can provide utilities and project owners with greater certainty. Because electrical equipment may remain in service for decades, certainty about who manufactured it, who can access it and whether parts and service will remain available can become part of the economic value of the asset.
From Lowest Cost to GridValue
This changing environment reflects a broader transformation in the electricity industry. Geo2Watts uses the term GridValue to describe the proposition that an energy project should be judged by more than the cost of the megawatt-hour it produces. Two projects may produce nominally identical electricity at similar generation costs while having dramatically different value to the electrical system.
One project may require a new transmission connection, a new substation, extensive power equipment and years of interconnection studies. Another may be located at an industrial brownfield with existing utility service, transformers, switchgear, permitted corridors and a large customer already consuming electricity at the site. The electrons may appear identical in a conventional cost comparison, but the projects are not.
GridValue recognizes attributes such as location, dispatchability, capacity, reliability, resilience, existing interconnection, proximity to load, infrastructure already in place and supply-chain security. A megawatt located beside an industrial customer can therefore be more valuable than an apparently cheaper megawatt located hundreds of miles away and dependent upon new transmission infrastructure. For power-equipment manufacturers, this shift is important because it changes electrical infrastructure from an ancillary project expense into part of the asset’s strategic value. A well-situated substation with adequate capacity, reliable switchgear, modern protection and room for expansion can materially improve the economics of a new energy project.
This leads to another concept that deserves greater attention: Infrastructure Arbitrage. Financial arbitrage captures value from price differences between markets. Infrastructure Arbitrage captures value from physical assets that have already been paid for but are no longer being used to their full economic potential. A brownfield energy project can potentially benefit from both at the same time by capturing temporal electricity price value while avoiding or reducing the capital and development time required to recreate infrastructure already in place.
Across the U.S., oil fields, refineries, retired generating stations, manufacturing campuses, mines, ports and military facilities contain substations, transformers, switchgear, utility corridors, roads, foundations and control buildings developed over many decades at enormous capital cost. In some cases, the industrial activity that originally justified those investments has declined while much of the supporting infrastructure remains.
Rather than assuming every new energy project should begin on undeveloped land, developers should ask whether existing infrastructure can support a productive new use. The cheapest new substation may be the one that has already been built, provided it can be safely and economically adapted for another operating life.
This does not mean simply re-energizing decades-old equipment. Infrastructure Arbitrage can create a significant market for infrastructure manufacturers because reuse begins with identifying which assets can remain and which should be refurbished, modernized or replaced. Existing substations may require new breakers, digital relays, bus modifications, grounding improvements, metering, communications, condition monitoring and protection upgrades. Infrastructure reuse therefore does not eliminate spending on electrical equipment. It allows new investment to leverage infrastructure that may already be worth many times the cost of the modernization.
Brownfields as a Modernization Market
The traditional model for a new power project begins with a greenfield site and progressively adds civil works, utility interconnection, substations and an entirely new electrical system. A growing portion of America’s next generation of energy infrastructure may develop differently. Industrial properties can already possess substantial utility service, transformers, switchgear and internal electrical loads. As the original use changes, those sites may accommodate energy storage, distributed generation, microgrids or new industrial loads while retaining valuable portions of the existing electrical backbone.
The resulting installation becomes a combination of legacy infrastructure and modern technology, creating precisely the type of engineering challenge the power-equipment manufacturers, EPC firms and electrical-system integrators are equipped to solve. Older breakers may need replacement. Electromechanical relays can give way to modern numerical protection. Switchboards may require extension or reconfiguration, and new resources may introduce bidirectional power flows that were not anticipated when the original system was designed. Facilities can also require automated transfer schemes, intelligent electronic devices, fiber communications, supervisory controls and more sophisticated condition monitoring.
Federal policy adds another reason for manufacturers to pay attention. In April 2026, President Trump issued a determination under Section 303 of the Defense Production Act identifying transformers, substations, high-voltage circuit breakers, power-control electronics, protective relay systems, capacitor banks and related manufacturing resources as essential to national defense. The determination cited limited domestic manufacturing capacity, extended procurement timelines and reliance on foreign supply.
The April action and August Executive Order address different issues, but together they send a similar message: the ability to manufacture, secure and maintain electrical infrastructure is increasingly being treated as a strategic national capability.
Long-Duration Energy Storage Provides One Example
Geo2Watts is approaching this opportunity from the perspective of long-duration energy storage. The company is developing the Borehole Battery Platform around the reuse of legacy oil and gas infrastructure. The underground portion is intended to use repurposed wells as closed-loop thermal-energy-storage assets. For the broader power Industry, however, the equally important opportunity lies in the electrical infrastructure that frequently surrounds these brownfield locations.
Oil fields can be major electricity consumers. Pumps, water-handling equipment and other industrial systems may require substantial utility service, substations, transformers and distribution infrastructure. As petroleum production eventually declines, some of those assets may retain considerable value even though their original purpose is changing. A new storage or distributed power project located on the same property may therefore begin with something a greenfield project does not have: an existing electrical system and often an established industrial load.
This is Infrastructure Arbitrage in practice. It also illustrates why GridValue can be more informative than evaluating an energy-storage project only by equipment cost or RTE. A resource capable of being deployed beside an existing substation and customer can offer a fundamentally different economic proposition from one requiring an entirely new interconnection. The opportunity is to make that existing infrastructure compatible with new resources safely, reliably and securely.
Long Beach as a Brownfield Laboratory
Southern California offers a compelling real-world laboratory for testing this approach. The Wilmington oil field and Long Beach waterfront combine legacy petroleum infrastructure, large industrial electrical loads, port facilities and existing substations. Geo2Watts is evaluating potential pilot projects in the Long Beach and Wilmington area where idle or marginal wells, electrical infrastructure and significant loads may coexist.
The larger question is whether infrastructure built for twentieth-century petroleum production can be economically repurposed for twenty-first-century electricity needs. The implications extend well beyond oil fields. Retired power plants, refineries, steel mills, mines, ports, military facilities and manufacturing campuses across the U.S. may contain electrical assets capable of supporting storage, distributed generation, microgrids or new industrial users.
Part of America’s energy transition may therefore become a re-electrification of places that are already electrified. Building a new energy resource at a property with roads, utility corridors, industrial zoning, existing loads and electrical infrastructure can be fundamentally different from constructing the same resource on undeveloped land. The brownfield itself becomes part of the project’s competitive advantage, while modernization becomes a new industrial opportunity.
The Installed Base Creates Another Opportunity
The August Executive Order also has potential implications for equipment already installed in the bulk-power system. Where the required security determinations are made, the DOE Secretary may impose conditions on the continued operation or maintenance of certain equipment. Depending upon the circumstances, those measures can include identifying, monitoring, securing, isolating, replacing or removing equipment, although reliability, safety and replacement availability must also be considered.
It is too early to determine the size of any resulting replacement market because implementation will depend upon DOE rules and individual security determinations. What is already clear is that utilities and asset owners have another reason to know precisely what equipment is installed, where it originated, what software and firmware it contains, whether outside parties retain remote-access capabilities and how difficult replacement would be if required.
This could expand the market for installed-base audits, lifecycle support, retrofit engineering and staged modernization. Manufacturers capable of helping an owner evaluate existing equipment and create a secure replacement strategy may gain an advantage over suppliers focused only on selling new lineups.
Designing Infrastructure for Several Generations
Infrastructure Arbitrage also suggests a different philosophy for new electrical systems. Power equipment and electrical infrastructure are frequently procured for a specific generating plant or industrial project, yet strategically located electrical infrastructure may outlive several generations of the technology connected to it. Generators can change, storage systems can be replaced, and industrial tenants can turn over while the substation and utility connection continue serving the property.
This argues for greater emphasis on modularity, maintainability, expandability and interoperability. A well-located electrical system designed with adequate bus capacity, adaptable protection, standardized interfaces and room for additional feeders can become a platform for future technologies that may not yet exist. From a GridValue perspective, that adaptability has economic value because it preserves options for the property owner and can reduce the cost and development time of future projects.
Domestic manufacturing reinforces this principle. An electrical platform designed to operate for decades is more valuable when replacement breakers, relays, components, firmware support and field service remain available from a dependable supply chain. Security policy and good lifecycle engineering therefore increasingly point in the same direction.
The greatest opportunity may therefore belong to manufacturers willing to broaden their definition of the business. Instead of acting only as suppliers of power equipment, they can become providers of secure electrical infrastructure platforms. Standardized brownfield retrofit packages, modular switchgear, documented domestic sourcing, digital-protection upgrades, secure controls, condition monitoring and pre-engineered solutions for energy storage and microgrids could all become increasingly valuable offerings.
America does not need to build its entire next electrical system from a blank sheet of paper. The country has already invested enormous amounts of capital in substations, industrial sites, transmission corridors, utility interconnections and related infrastructure, much of which may be capable of productive second lives. Infrastructure Arbitrage is the process of recognizing that embedded value and combining existing assets with new technologies rather than automatically replacing what came before. In a period of unprecedented load growth, constrained supply chains and rising development costs, some of America’s most valuable new power infrastructure may be infrastructure it already owns.
—Philip Cruver is CEO of Geo2Watts and an infrastructure pioneer and entrepreneur with decades of experience developing and financing innovative energy and industrial projects. All images in this article are used with permission of Geo2Watts.