A standard crane is four to eight weeks. The switchgear feeding it is fifty-two to eighty. Here is the order to buy them in, and what a late energisation date really costs.
For most of the last forty years the crane was the long-lead item on a factory project. You ordered it early, you chased it, and everything else waited. That has flipped. On a 2026 industrial build, a standard single girder crane is four to eight weeks. The medium-voltage switchgear feeding the bay is fifty-two to eighty. A substation transformer in the five to fifty megavolt-ampere class runs seventy-five to a hundred and ten weeks, and in Europe the large power units are quoted at forty-eight to sixty months.
So the crane arrives, gets erected, gets load tested with a hired generator, and then sits there while the site waits for a connection. We see this on maybe one project in five now, up from almost never before 2022. This article is about the mismatch, what it costs, and how to sequence an order so the crane is not the thing standing idle.
The useful way to read this is by voltage class, because the constraint is not the same everywhere. Dry-type transformers in the small sizes are still a normal industrial purchase. Anything involving a utility substation is not.
| Equipment | 2026 lead time | What it means for a crane bay |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic transfer switch | 24–40 weeks | Only relevant if the crane is on standby power |
| Dry-type transformer, 0–2 MVA, 480 V to 208 V | 20–32 weeks | Covers most single-bay crane loads on its own |
| Pad-mount distribution transformer, 0–5 MVA | 40–65 weeks | Typical for a new bay taking its own service |
| Medium-voltage switchgear, 15 kV class | 52–80 weeks | The gate on any new MV service, crane or not |
| Substation transformer, 5–25 MVA | 65–95 weeks | Plant-level; usually shared with the whole site |
| Substation transformer, 25–50 MVA | 85–110 weeks | US domestic manufacturers booked through 2027 |
| Generator step-up transformer, over 50 MVA | 100–150+ weeks | Not a crane project; but it eats the same factories |
Source: Terrapin Construction Group equipment procurement table, 10 June 2026, based on active manufacturer slot reservations. These are US market figures and they vary by manufacturer and quantity, but the shape is the same in every industrial market we sell into.
Wood Mackenzie's quarterly survey tracks the same categories and shows no repair. In the second quarter of 2026, average lead times were 143 weeks for generator step-up units, 128 weeks for power transformers, and 44 weeks for switchgear. The power transformer number did improve by ten weeks over the first quarter. Ten weeks on a hundred and twenty-eight is not a recovery, it is noise.
| Category (Wood Mackenzie Q2 2026) | Average lead time | Direction | Pre-2020 reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generation step-up transformer | 143 weeks | Slightly down QoQ | Around 12–14 months |
| Power transformer | 128 weeks | Down 10 weeks QoQ | Around 12–14 months |
| Switchgear | 44 weeks | Slightly down QoQ | Well under a year |
| Pad-mount transformers, reclosers, wire and cable | Rising | Up again in Q2 | Weeks, not quarters |
Europe is worse at the top of the range. The GridReadiness index for the third quarter of 2026 keeps large power transformers at forty-eight to sixty months, against twelve to fourteen months before the pandemic, and states plainly that a project ordering a large unit in the fourth quarter of 2026 should plan delivery in 2030 or 2031. Siemens Energy reported a record €51 billion backlog in Grid Technologies at the end of June 2026 with a book-to-bill of 1.48, transformers the largest contributor. GE Vernova's electrification backlog reached $40.6 billion, up 69 percent year on year.
Read that again. Order books growing fifty to seventy percent faster than deliveries. A queue does not shorten while that is true.
Here is the awkward part. The crane is almost never the reason the site needs a big transformer. A hundred tonne gantry crane has about 108 kW installed across the hoist, trolley and two long travel drives. Sized on ten minute RMS current rather than nameplate, that machine needs roughly 100 kVA. A five tonne single girder needs around 10 kVA. One bay, one crane, one modest dry-type transformer.
| Crane capacity | Installed power | Current at 400 V | Transformer on 10 min RMS | Typical 2026 supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 t | 12.0 kW | 22.6 A | 10 kVA | Dry-type, 20–32 weeks |
| 20 t | 28.6 kW | 53.9 A | 25 kVA | Dry-type, 20–32 weeks |
| 50 t | 67.5 kW | 127.2 A | 63 kVA | Dry-type or pad-mount |
| 100 t | 108 kW | 203.6 A | 100 kVA | Pad-mount, 40–65 weeks |
Those are SIEC planning figures, calculated from our standard configurations at 400 V, 0.85 power factor and 0.90 efficiency, with a duty factor of 0.45 to 0.55. They are not catalogue data. A heavier duty machine with bigger drives will sit above them, but not by a factor.
So the crane is a rounding error next to a plant's service entrance. That is exactly why buyers get caught. The purchasing team treats the power supply as someone else's package, the electrical contractor treats the crane as a load to be connected later, and nobody notices that the two schedules crossed until the crane is on the floor and the switchgear is still in a factory.
Almost every delay we see comes from confusing these three. They have different owners, different lead times, and different prices.
| Scope | Typical size | Lead time | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Utility service and interconnection | Site total, 100 kVA to tens of MVA | 4 months to over 2 years | Utility, then the site developer |
| 2. Site substation and MV distribution | 1–50 MVA transformer, MV switchgear | 52–110 weeks | Electrical contractor or EPC |
| 3. Bay distribution and crane supply | 10–100 kVA, LV panel, isolator, festoon or conductor rail | 20–32 weeks for the transformer, days for the rest | Whoever holds the electrical package |
The single most useful question to ask at the kickoff meeting is therefore not "when does the crane arrive" but "which of these three is on the critical path, and what is its order date". On a greenfield site it is scope 1 or 2, and the crane schedule is irrelevant. On an existing plant adding a bay, it is often scope 3, and the dry-type transformer becomes the thing to chase.
Utility connection times, from published sources rather than sales talk: ESB Networks quotes sixty business days for a small commercial connection after quote acceptance, six to nine months for large low-voltage or smaller medium-voltage loads over 100 kVA that need a substation, and over two years for major loads above 4 MVA at 110 kV. Terrapin's 2026 procurement guide quotes four to nine months under 1 MW and eight to eighteen months between 1 and 5 MW. Those windows sit comfortably alongside a crane delivery, which is why teams assume the power will be there. It usually is, if the application went in early. It is not if the application waited for the building to be finished.
Transformers are the visible shortage. The queue is the reason the shortage persists.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Queued Up report for 2026 counted about 8,200 projects actively seeking transmission interconnection in the United States at the end of 2025: 1,312 GW of generation plus roughly 749 GW of storage. That is over 2,000 GW of proposed capacity chasing connections. Total active volume fell 10 percent year on year, which sounds like relief until you see why: over 750 GW withdrew in 2025 against about 600 GW of new requests. Withdrawals exceeded new applications for the second year running.
| Metric (LBNL, end of 2025) | Value |
|---|---|
| Active projects in US interconnection queues | About 8,200 |
| Active generation capacity | 1,312 GW |
| Active storage capacity | 749 GW |
| Capacity with a draft or executed interconnection agreement, not yet operating | 549 GW |
| Median time from interconnection request to commercial operation, projects built in 2025 | Over 5 years |
| Share of 2000–2020 requested capacity that reached operation by end 2025 | 13 percent |
| Share withdrawn over the same period | 75 percent |
| Natural gas capacity in queues, 2025 change | 253 GW, up 86 percent |
One caveat that matters for a factory: this report covers generation and storage. Large industrial loads sit in separate queues and are not counted here. But they compete for the same substations, the same transformers, and the same crews.
Britain shows the demand side more directly. Contracted demand in the connection queue rose from 41 GW in November 2024 to 125 GW in June 2025. At transmission level it went from 17 GW to 97 GW, nearly sixfold. At distribution, where most factories connect, from 24 GW to 29 GW, a rise of a fifth. Ofgem attributes about 73 GW of the total to data centres, against a peak demand for Great Britain of 45 GW in 2025. In 2023 the government and Ofgem reported that transmission applications had grown roughly tenfold in five years, that the average delay for projects applying to connect was over five years, and that only 14 percent connected by the date they had requested.
That is the competition your new bay is in. Not against other crane buyers. Against data centres that can pay for capacity and are willing to wait.
This is where the crane sits in the story. If the building is ready and the crane is ready but the power is nine months out, someone is paying for a finished asset that cannot earn.
| Situation | Published cost of delay | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy industry transition to stable operations | USD 1.5–3 million per day | Alvarez & Marsal, October 2026 |
| Megaprojects that run late | 78 percent delayed; up to 30 percent value lost in the transition to operations | Construction Industry Institute data cited by A&M |
| Infrastructure projects | 66 percent overran cost, average overrun 44 percent | A&M, 2026 |
| Commissioning delay on a 60 MW facility | GBP 11.2 million per month of lost revenue | Vistergy analysis, April 2026 |
Those numbers come from projects far larger than a crane bay, and we should not pretend a two-crane warehouse loses three million a day. But the mechanism is the same at any scale: the crane is bought to move material, and until it moves material it is a depreciating steel structure. Even a modest 20 tonne machine at 2,000 hours a year, at the handling cost per tonne-hour a plant actually tracks, is worth tens of thousands a year in throughput. Losing six months of that to a late transformer is a real number on someone's capital plan.
We now advise buyers to work backwards from energisation, not forwards from the crane. The crane is the shortest item and should be ordered last, not first, unless the bay is on an existing service.
| Month from target start-up | Action | Why this order |
|---|---|---|
| Month 0 | Submit the utility connection application with a load schedule | Queue position is set by application date, nothing else |
| Month 0–1 | Reserve the MV switchgear and substation transformer slots | 52–110 weeks; the slot is the asset |
| Month 1–2 | Order the bay dry-type transformer | 20–32 weeks, and that is your real crane deadline |
| Month 2–4 | Let the runway, rail and crane foundation civil works | Concrete cure and rail alignment take longer than people plan |
| Month 6–9 | Place the crane order | 4–10 weeks standard, 16–22 semi-custom |
| Month 10–12 | Erect, connect, load test | Needs the LV panel live, not the whole site |
Two exceptions. If the crane is a special machine, add the special design time and it comes forward. If the bay takes its power from an existing plant service with spare capacity, scope 3 collapses to a panel and a cable, and the crane becomes the long-lead item again.
Sometimes, yes, and it is underused. A crane can be erected and even load tested on hired generation, then transferred when the real supply lands. The cost is not trivial but it is far below a stalled building.
| Generator capacity | Monthly rental, before fuel | Crane it covers |
|---|---|---|
| 25–150 kW | USD 1,500–4,500 | Single girder to about 20 t |
| 150–500 kW | USD 3,500–9,000 | Double girder 20–50 t, or several bays |
| 500 kW to 1 MW | USD 8,000–18,000 | Whole bay including compressors and lighting |
| 1–2 MW | USD 15,000–35,000 | Multi-bay commissioning |
Fuel is separate and it is not a rounding error: fuel logistics, tanks, deliveries and monitoring commonly add USD 2,000 to 8,000 a week on a unit carrying real load. Figures from Industrial Rental Co, rates last reviewed June 2026, planning ranges not quotes.
Four engineering caveats, from experience rather than brochures. First, a small generator has a high source impedance, so drive harmonics that look acceptable on a utility supply can push voltage distortion far higher; the same six-pulse drive that gives 29 percent current distortion can produce more than 30 percent voltage distortion on a set with 12 percent subtransient reactance. Second, earthing and residual current protection have to be rethought, because the set is often a separately derived source and a type A device will not see a smooth DC residual current from a drive. Third, phase rotation and voltage have to be checked before the first hoist, not after. Fourth, load testing on a generator is not the same as load testing on the site supply; if the acceptance test has to be witnessed at 125 percent of rated load, size the set for the starting current of the largest motor plus everything else running, and expect a soft start or a drive to be mandatory.
Lead time is only half the story. Buyers who last priced a substation in 2019 are in for a shock.
| Measure | Change | Period |
|---|---|---|
| US PPI, power and distribution transformers | +91.4 percent | January 2020 to July 2026 |
| US PPI, switchgear and switchboard apparatus | +89.4 percent | January 2020 to August 2026 |
| Generation step-up transformer unit cost | +45 percent | Since 2019 |
| Power transformer unit cost | +77 percent | Since 2019 |
| Distribution transformer unit cost | +78 to 95 percent | Since 2019 |
| China 10–220 MVA transformer export price to the US | +112 percent year on year | August 2026 |
Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics series WPU117409 and PCU335313335313 as compiled by NextMSC in October 2026; Wood Mackenzie, August 2025; Hilo Research on Goldman Sachs data, September 2026. Note the last row. Chinese export pricing to the United States more than doubled in a year. When scarcity is that strong, price stops being a negotiation.
The trade pattern has shifted and it affects who can actually quote you a date.
| Market | Signal |
|---|---|
| Europe | Large power transformers at 48–60 months; Siemens Energy and GE Vernova backlogs at record levels; most new capacity arrives after 2028 |
| United States | GSU demand up 274 percent between 2019 and 2025; domestic large transformer capacity fully booked; imports around 40 percent of large units sourced from Europe |
| China | Large transformer export value down 22 percent year on year in August 2026, but exports to the US up 542 percent year on year |
| South Korea | Large transformer exports up 72 percent year on year in August 2026; US-bound medium transformers, HV switchgear and LV switchgear up 35, 213 and 149 percent |
| Global balance | Goldman Sachs expects the US demand-versus-local-supply gap to narrow from 72 percent today to 61 percent by 2028 |
Two practical consequences. First, if your electrical contractor is quoting a European or US-made large transformer for a 2028 energisation, ask what the delivery date actually is, in writing. The GridReadiness index is blunt about this: for a 2028–2029 energisation, second-tier manufacturers, existing equipment on site, or reserved slots are the realistic options. Second, a Chinese or Korean medium-power unit may be the only way to hold the date, which brings classification, testing and documentation questions that are worth settling before the purchase order rather than after.
For context on why this keeps happening, look at the policy side. The European Commission's Grids Package, published 10 December 2025, puts the investment need for transmission and distribution grids at EUR 1.2 trillion by 2040, with electrification of final energy consumption expected to rise from about 23 percent to about 32 percent by 2030. The Electrification Action Plan of 17 July 2026 notes that the EU electrification rate has been stuck at 23 percent for a decade and that industrial electrification sits around 33 percent, with a slow grid named as one of the barriers. On the generation side, the IEA projects data centre electricity consumption roughly doubling from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030.
None of this is a reason to delay a crane. It is a reason to stop treating the power supply as a detail.
These clauses cost nothing at tender and save arguments later. We have seen every one of them become a dispute on a real project.
| Clause | What it should say |
|---|---|
| Delivery versus energisation | Separate the two dates in the contract, with separate milestones and separate payment triggers |
| Storage and preservation | If the crane arrives before power, who stores it, who covers preservation, and what happens to the warranty clock |
| Warranty start | Starts at successful load test on site supply, not at shipment or delivery |
| Standby costs | Day rate for a site team waiting on energisation, agreed in advance |
| Supply specification | Voltage, frequency, phases, fault level, earthing system and available short-circuit current, stated numerically |
| Factory versus site testing | Which tests are witnessed at the factory, which are repeated on site, and who pays for the repeat |
| Temporary supply | Whether commissioning on hired generation is permitted, and what source quality it must meet |
| Spares with the first shipment | Wire rope, brake pads, limit switches, handset cable shipped with the crane, not ordered later |
| Documentation handover | Wiring diagrams, drive parameters, load test certificate and declaration of conformity before the electrician needs them |
| Escalation clause | Steel and freight indices named, with a cap and a review date |
It would be dishonest to end on "buy the transformer first". Sometimes the crane is genuinely the long item, and a buyer who orders electrical equipment before understanding that wastes money.
A standard single girder machine is four to eight weeks. A box girder is six to ten. Semi-custom is sixteen to twenty-two weeks, and fully custom is twenty-four weeks and up. Add special requirements and the picture changes completely: explosion-proof machines, cleanroom units with stainless cladding and low-outgassing lubricants, grab buckets with hydraulic closing, or a precast stacker with absolute positioning and a control system integrated into the plant PLC. Those designs go through approval drawings, sometimes third-party design review, and then fabrication. Twenty-six to thirty-six weeks is normal, and we have quoted longer.
There is also a civil dependency that catches people out. Craneways and rails need concrete, cure time, survey and alignment. On a gantry crane the runway alone can carry more carbon and more cost than the machine, and it takes months, not weeks. If the bay is on an existing slab with dowel plates, that time collapses. If it needs a cast-in rail beam on piles, the runway may genuinely outlast both the crane and the dry-type transformer.
The honest rule: compare the three critical paths in weeks, in one table, before the first purchase order. Most projects have never done this once.
Buyers ask us to compress delivery almost every week. Some of it is possible. Some of it is theatre.
Possible: factory acceptance testing before shipment rather than after arrival, so a defect is found in our shop and not on your slab. Split shipment, with the hoist and panel ahead of the bridge if the building sequence allows. Pre-wiring of panels and pre-parameterisation of drives so site work is connection and verification, not configuration. Documentation delivered as a package with the machine, including wiring diagrams and the load test certificate, because the most common cause of a crane sitting idle after energisation is a missing drawing. Pre-commissioning checks by the customer's electrician against a written list, which we supply for every machine.
Not possible: compressing steel fabrication without paying for a premium slot, bending a load test, or skipping the design review that catches the one dimension nobody checked. A crane built in five weeks instead of eight, and then load tested twice because the first test failed, is slower than the honest schedule.
Four to eight weeks for a standard single girder machine, six to ten for a box girder, and sixteen to twenty-two for a semi-custom unit. Add two to six weeks for ocean freight and customs if you are importing, plus two to four weeks on site for erection, connection and load testing. In practice the crane is rarely the item that sets your start-up date. See the single girder crane range for capacities and spans.
Yes, and it is often the right call. Erection, alignment and mechanical checks need no power. Electrical commissioning, no-load operation and the witnessed load test do. Many projects run the crane on hired generation for commissioning and transfer to the site supply later, provided the generator is sized for the starting current of the largest motor and the earthing arrangement is reviewed. What you must not do is store a crane on site for months without preservation, because gearboxes, brakes and rope deteriorate faster in a damp building than in our warehouse.
Not necessarily a dedicated one, but it needs a defined supply. A 20 tonne machine with about 28.6 kW installed draws around 54 A at 400 V, and sized on ten minute RMS it needs roughly 25 kVA. If the plant service has spare capacity, a dedicated transformer is unnecessary. If the bay is new, a small dry-type unit is the cheapest way to get a crane running without waiting for the site substation, and it is a twenty to thirty-two week item rather than a two-year one.
Roughly USD 1,500 to 4,500 a month for 25 to 150 kW, and USD 3,500 to 9,000 for 150 to 500 kW, before fuel. Fuel logistics typically adds USD 2,000 to 8,000 a week on a unit carrying real load. For a single bay commissioning a 20 tonne crane over a few weeks, the total is usually well under the cost of delaying a start-up, which is why we recommend it more often than buyers expect.
Not meaningfully. Prices have roughly doubled since 2020 on US producer price indices, order books at Siemens Energy and GE Vernova are still growing faster than output, and most announced new capacity arrives after 2028. Goldman Sachs expects the US demand-versus-local-supply gap to narrow from 72 percent to 61 percent by 2028, which is still a large gap. Plan on the current ranges and treat any shorter promise as something to verify in writing.
The electrical connection application goes first, the same week you decide to build. Then the switchgear and substation transformer slots. Then the bay transformer. The crane comes later, unless the bay is on an existing service with spare capacity, in which case the order reverses. Comparing the three critical paths in one table before the first purchase order is the single highest-value hour of planning on a crane project. If you want a sanity check on the crane side, the engineering team will give you realistic weeks rather than optimistic ones.
Related articles:
Gantry Crane Power Supply: What 200 Metres of Runway Does to Your Voltage, 5 to 100 Ton
Jib Crane Slip Ring: What Four Wires Have to Cross Before the Hoist Moves, 0.125 to 5 Ton
Traveling Jib Power Supply: The Three Moving Joints Nobody Draws, 0.125 to 2 Ton
Crane Harmonic Distortion: What Five Drives on One Busbar Do to a Double Girder, 5 to 100 Ton
Crane Order Books: What 2026 OEM Backlogs Mean for Your Delivery Date, 5 to 100 Ton