The energization date is not set by the civil works: it is set by the slowest item on the bill of materials. Lead times for medium voltage switchgear are now a schedule design variable, not a purchasing formality. Here is what stages make them up, why they stretched out, and the nine data points to confirm against the nameplate.
The lead times of a switchgear panel are not one block of manufacturing: they are a chain of stages, and the factory governs only some of them.
Lead times are not won on the shop floor. The critical path does not run through the welding: it runs through the two signatures and the slowest part.
Because demand for heavy equipment grew faster than factory capacity. In its 25 February 2025 report on the transmission grid supply chain, the International Energy Agency documented that securing a large power transformer can take up to four years and cables two to three years, lead times that had nearly doubled versus 2021.
That figure is for transformers, not switchgear: they share neither supply chain nor components. For medium voltage, the clearest public reference is the T&D World analysis of 26 June 2024: lead times stood at 12 to 16 weeks before 2020, rose to close to 52 weeks during the pandemic and sat at 26 to 32 weeks in 2024. It is also worth reading the dates of the industry's response: on 15 September 2026 Hitachi Energy announced 528 million dollars for a transformer plant in Gallman, Mississippi, with production expected in 2029.
Three independent pressures coexist here, and they should not be read as cause and effect. The first one is demand: according to the XM release of 28 September 2026, demand on the Sistema Interconectado Nacional, the Colombian interconnected power system, was 7,696.79 GWh in August 2026, 6.75 percent higher than in August 2025, and the same report records the system's all-time high daily demand so far in September 2026, at 266.6 GWh-day.
The second one is execution: with XM and Grupo de Energía de Bogotá figures compiled on 31 August 2026, 60 percent of the 42 Colombian National Transmission System projects are running behind their commercial operation date, and of the 4,475 MW of new generation planned for 2026 only 732.8 MW were in commercial operation as of 27 August.
The third one is the global supply chain. The Colombian delays have local causes (permitting, land acquisition, communities, construction) with no connection to the lead times of the global industry: no single pressure causes the others, but all three land on the same Gantt chart. And of the three, the only one the engineer controls is what they specify against.
What changes is the nature of the risk, not the quality of the equipment, and to see it you have to separate two kinds of test in IEC 62271-200. Type tests, in Clause 7, are run once per design on representative samples and several of them are destructive (dielectric, short circuit, temperature rise, making and breaking, internal arc), so they are not performed on the unit that is delivered. Routine tests, in Clause 8, apply to every unit and verify materials and build quality.
The consequence matters when lead times are the argument: an available switchgear panel is not a less tested one. It is covered by the same type test report as its design and by its own routine test protocol; what it cannot acquire later is a different classification, a different kV, a different kA or a different internal arc class.
That is why taking a unit that has already been built and customs cleared does not speed up manufacturing: it removes stages that have already happened, the procurement, the assembly, the freight and the import. And it shortens lead times with something a schedule values more than a promise, a nameplate physically verified before a date is committed.
When lead times are resolved with an existing unit, verification is documentary and nameplate based. And the content of the nameplate is not discretionary: IEC 62271-200 sets it.
Technical acceptance checklist
One observation from the field: point 9 stops more projects than any other. If the protocol does not match the serial number of that unit, energization halts right at the end, when there is no margin left in the lead times.
The trade-off is exact: you exchange configuration freedom for time. What can be adjusted later is the modular extension with the ORMALINK assembly, which on the CGMcosmos and the CGM.3 extends the assembly without opening the gas compartments sealed at the factory; the rating of the current-limiting fuses on the P function, within the manufacturer's table; and the relay settings, ekorRPG on the V function and ekorRPT on the P. If you have not defined the functions yet, the guide on how to specify the secondary switchgear panel function by function settles it.
What cannot be changed later is the rated voltage, the insulation level, the short-time withstand current, the breaking capacity, the internal arc class or the dimensions: these are design properties verified by type test. And what disqualifies an available unit most often is not the kA or the kV, it is the geometry. If you are still deciding the voltage, the published guides cover 24 or 36 kV, the CGMcosmos 24 kV switchgear panel and the CGM.3 36 kV switchgear panel.
Specification lesson. Do not specify first and ask about lead times afterwards: do both in the same step. Set the rated values from your short-circuit study and your protection coordination, and in that same meeting check the specification against what exists today, with the nameplate and the test protocol in front of you. If the available unit covers your values and your geometry, you are not giving up engineering: you are taking manufacturing and import out of the schedule.
The assembly answers to IEC 62271-200 (metal enclosed, above 1 kV up to and including 52 kV) and each device to its own standard: IEC 62271-100 for the vacuum circuit breaker on the V function, IEC 62271-103 for the switch-disconnector on the L, and IEC 62271-105 together with IEC 60282-1 for the switch-fuse combination on the P.
In Colombia the installation must comply with RETIE, the Colombian electrical code, updated by Resolution 40284 of 2026 of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, whose Book 3 deals with transformation installations. If your project is in utilities and renewable energy, mining or Oil & Gas, Industrias Ectricol S.A.S. integrates the switchgear panel from Funza, Cundinamarca. See the datasheets for the CGMcosmos and the CGM.3.
There is no single industry figure. The clearest public reference is T&D World, 26 June 2024: 12 to 16 weeks before 2020, close to 52 weeks at the pandemic peak and 26 to 32 weeks in 2024. Those are North American market figures and they vary with the configuration, so the lead time for a specific project is confirmed at the quotation stage.
No. It is covered by the same Clause 7 type test report of IEC 62271-200 as any unit of its design, and its Clause 8 routine test protocol is already documented. What it cannot change is its classification: a different kV, a different kA or a different internal arc class would require a new type test.
In magnitude, the procurement of long lead components, because the assembly advances at the pace of its slowest part. In avoidable lost time, the two external gates: drawing approval at the start, and the inspection with the energization window at the end.
The modular extension with the ORMALINK assembly, the rating of the current-limiting fuses on the P function within the manufacturer's table, the relay settings and the accessories. The rated voltage, the insulation level, the short-time withstand current, the breaking capacity, the internal arc class and the dimensions cannot be modified.
Because demand grew faster than factory capacity. The International Energy Agency reported in February 2025 that large power transformers can take up to four years and that lead times had nearly doubled versus 2021. The new capacity arrives at the end of the decade: the plant Hitachi Energy announced in September 2026 starts producing in 2029.
A plus for your schedule: we have Ormazabal CGMcosmos and CGM.3 switchgear available for immediate delivery in Colombia, which takes the manufacturing and import stages out of your lead times and off the critical path. Ask us about the available configuration and verify the nameplate before you commit to a date.
Does your schedule depend on a switchgear panel that does not exist yet?
Confirm with our team which configuration is available in Colombia today and check it against your rated values.
Check availability on WhatsApp View CGMcosmos switchgearOn 4 June 2022, in Odessa, Texas, a surge arrester failed and caused a single phase to ground fault on the 345 kV system. Protection cleared it in three cycles, and the system still lost 2,555 MW: the grid...
Keep readingYour plant grows, the utility delivers the energy at medium voltage, and the question arrives: who turns it into the low voltage that drives the motors? A transformer substation. In Colombia, RETIE (the...
Keep reading