Record

Changelog

What changed and when, by week, newest first. Built from the dates on the content itself, so nothing here can be claimed without a dated page behind it.

Week of October 19, 2026

Week of October 12, 2026

  • Article. Dry Cooler or Cooling Tower: What the Water Bill Says in 15 Markets. A thousand gallons of water and sewer costs $24.80 in Douglas County, Georgia and $8.68 in Baton Rouge as of October 2026, and since a 50 MW open cooling tower needs about 300 million gallons a year, Open Factory's MEP Cost Table puts the gap at $3.6 million a year.

Week of October 5, 2026

  • Article. Fiber Laser Cutters: What a $500,000 Price Gap Buys. A Chinese 6 to 12 kW fiber laser sells for $45,000 to $85,000 FOB in December 2025 and lands at about $128,000 after the 41% duty stack, while federal buyers paid $645,000 to $1.75 million in 2025, a $504,000 gap to the cheapest award Open Factory's Equipment Price Benchmark itemizes.
  • Revised. 58 articles. Charts and details updated across the archive.

Week of September 7, 2026

Week of August 31, 2026

Week of August 24, 2026

  • Reading. Public Bid-Tab Price Book headline: $69/kVA. Median public award price, pad-mount 3-phase 225 to 500 kVA, n=60, 11 buyers, 11 states, awards 2024-02-06 to 2026-08-24. 2,712 award lines, 51 published bands. Bands free; rows Pro.

Week of August 17, 2026

  • Article. The Recommended Spares List Is Where the Margin Hides. On public awards Open Factory can read, the spares line is 0.8% of a transformer award, 2% of a genset and 20% of a breaker buy, and the City of Ocala paid $40,197.50 per ABB R-Mag breaker in November 2023 and $44,499.75 in November 2025 with no second quote.
  • Article. 800 VDC Will Strand Your White-Space Frame Agreement. NVIDIA set a ship date for 800 VDC on August 11, 2026, with the MGX power rack due in the second half of 2026. Open Factory finds a five-year 415 V UPS and AC busway frame agreement puts 40 to 60% of its dollars into superseded SKUs.
  • Article. What 50 MW Costs in 15 US Markets. A 50 MW connection requested in Northern Virginia in 2026 energizes in 2033 after $75 million of collateral and a 14 year contract, while the same 50 MW in Houston posts no rule-mandated security and can be live in 2028, per Open Factory's Large-Load Cost Table as of August 2026.
  • Reading. Large-Load Cost Table headline: 2033. Realistic energization year for a new 50 MW load, Dominion Energy Virginia. Source: JLL Global Data Center Outlook 2026, p.18 (about seven years to power in Northern Virginia); Dominion queue 70 GW against a 24.6 GW peak, February 2026. Table as of 21 August 2026.
  • Reference. Large-load power by market: 15 pages refreshed

Week of August 3, 2026

  • Reading. Book-to-Bill League Table headline: 3.0x. Powell Industries, quarter ended June 30 2026, orders $934M on revenue $311.7M, reported ratio. Source: Powell Q3 FY2026 earnings release, 8-K Ex. 99.1, filed August 3 2026. Eighteen OEMs in the table; full table is Pro.

Week of July 20, 2026

  • Article. Liquidated Damages at 0.5% a Week: Why Caps Sit at the Vendor's Margin. Liquidated damages in public transformer, switchgear and genset contracts run about 0.5% of price a week, capped at 5%, so as of July 2026 a week of delay on a 50 MW datacenter hall costs about $2.7 million against $74,000 of LDs, per Open Factory's Large-Load Cost Table.

Week of July 13, 2026

  • Article. How to Write an RFQ for Capital Equipment in 2026. An equipment RFQ in 2026 has to settle escalators, LDs, milestones and tariff refunds: the City of Ocala agreed $8,070,340 for two 105 MVA autotransformers in August 2023 and approved $9,170,340 for the same units on April 28, 2026, a $1.1 million PPI escalator, per Open Factory's Bid-Tab Price Book.

Week of July 6, 2026

  • Article. The 2% Funnel: 474 GW Requested, 9 GW Approved, 5.8 GW Energized in ERCOT. Texas had about 474 GW of large-load interconnection requests as of August 2026, and ERCOT's March 26, 2026 status table shows 9.0 GW approved to energize and 5.8 GW energized, so about 2% has permission to draw power, as tracked in Open Factory's Large-Load Cost Table.

Week of June 29, 2026

  • Article. CloudNC and Limitless Labs: AI Is Coming for the CNC Programming Bottleneck. CloudNC and Limitless Labs raised $40 million between them from 16 June to 8 September 2026 to automate CNC programming for the 4,790 CNC tool programmers in America's 16,619 machine shops, and Open Factory's seat math shows a 50% CAM cut returns about $22,139 a year per programmer.
  • Article. The R-454B Summer: What the Refrigerant Switch Did to Chiller Prices. A 20 lb cylinder of R-454B cost $345 in 2021 and $700 to $2,000 in July and August 2025, the switch raised Carrier chiller list prices 10% in March 2024 and March 2025, and Open Factory finds the 563 lb charge in a 500-ton chiller is 1.2% of the machine.

Week of June 22, 2026

  • Article. OFCI vs Design-Build: How Hyperscalers Buy Chillers and Colo Developers Do Not. Owner-furnished, contractor-installed chillers and CDUs for a 20 MW liquid-cooled hall cost $27.9 million against $32.8 million through the mechanical subcontract, a saving of $4.9 million or 14.9%, because OFCI strips a 15% subcontractor markup and 10% GC fee, per Open Factory's Datacenter MEP Cost Table as of June 2026.

Week of June 15, 2026

Week of June 8, 2026

  • Article. Reading a Switchgear Quote: The Eleven Line Items That Hide the Schedule. A medium-voltage switchgear quote has eleven line items and four of them move the delivery date more than the price. Riverside Public Utilities paid $2,561,551.88 for one 15 kV metal-clad lineup in June 2024 and it was still in the factory eighteen months later, per Open Factory's Bid-Tab Price Book.
  • Article. 1,250 Hours: Reading BMW's Humanoid Pilot as a Buyer. BMW's Figure 02 humanoid pilot delivered about 1,250 operating hours in ten months at Spartanburg in 2025, or 0.6 of one worker's year, moving more than 90,000 sheet-metal parts, and it is the only pilot with a disclosed runtime among the nine Open Factory's OEM Disclosure Scorecard scores.

Week of May 25, 2026

  • Article. The $306k Machine: A Record Half-Year With Fewer Units. US manufacturers ordered a record $3.44 billion of metalworking machinery in the first half of 2026 on 11,243 machines, 2.6% fewer than in the second half of 2025, so the average order rose to about $306,000 from $277,000, as tracked in Open Factory's Bid-Tab Price Book.

Week of May 11, 2026

  • Article. From 36 Weeks to Stock: The ControlLogix Lead-Time Cycle. Rockwell's own bulletin listed a ControlLogix 5580 controller at 35 calendar days on September 22, 2021 and 208 days on October 26, 2022, and Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor, which holds eleven editions of that bulletin, now reads the PLC line at stock.
  • Article. Grainger vs McMaster vs Amazon Business: A 50-SKU Price Basket. Open Factory priced the same 50 MRO items at six distributors on 10 September 2026: Fastenal's median web price was 126% above the cheapest storefront, McMaster-Carr's was 37% above, and Amazon Business was the floor, cheapest on 34 of 48 SKUs with a comparison.

Week of May 4, 2026

  • Article. A Factory Owner's Guide to the PJM Capacity Charge. PJM's RTO capacity clearing price rose from $28.92 to $329.17 per MW-day in two auctions, so a 5 MW plant in Met-Ed territory pays about $568,000 for capacity in the delivery year starting June 1, 2026 against about $50,000 in 2024, per Open Factory's PJM Capacity Charge Estimator.
  • Article. A Robot Costs $61k. The Cell Costs $150k. North American buyers paid $61,198 per robot arm in 2025, but a working cell costs 1.9 to 2.4 times that, $113,336 to $144,432 for three common cobot cells priced line by line in Open Factory's Bid-Tab Price Book as of September 2026.
  • Article. The $60 Million Deposit: How Equipment Slots Became Datacenter Currency. One slot for a 384 MW GE Vernova 7HA.02 turbine takes a $60 million reservation payment, 20% of a $300 million machine. GE Vernova ended June 2026 with 116 GW under contract, 63 GW as slot reservations, and $25.8 billion paid in advance, which Open Factory's MEP Cost Table carries.

Week of April 27, 2026

  • Article. Who Gets the IEEPA Refund. The IEEPA refund goes to the importer of record, not the buyer who paid a surcharge, and CBP puts the pool at about $166 billion across 53 million entries and 330,000 importers as of March 2026. Open Factory's Tariff Exposure Calculator flags the refundable lines on every 2025 entry.
  • Article. Behind the Meter, In Front of the Queue: 90 GW Announced, 2 GW Running. Datacenter developers have announced about 90 GW of behind-the-meter generation across 59 US projects and about 2 GW of it runs, or 2.2%, while EIA's July 2026 inventory lists 68.1 GW of planned gas nationwide. Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor forecasts what energizes by the end of 2028.

Week of April 20, 2026

  • Article. Compressed Air Is 10% of Your Factory's Power Bill. Compressed air takes about 10% of a typical plant's electricity by DOE's count, and a 200 hp rotary screw compressor running 6,000 hours a year at the 2025 US industrial rate of 8.62 cents per kWh costs about $70,000 a year. Open Factory finds a leak program worth $83,000.

Week of April 13, 2026

  • Article. Five Majors Bought Their Way Into Liquid Cooling. Here Is the Price List. Five majors paid $16.3 billion of disclosed prices for liquid cooling companies in seventeen months, with Ecolab buying CoolIT for $4.75 billion at 29 times EBITDA on March 20, 2026 and Eaton closing Boyd Thermal at $9.5 billion and 22.5 times, per Open Factory's deal table.

Week of March 23, 2026

  • Article. Recips vs Turbines vs Fuel Cells for a 100 MW Bridge. A 100 MW bridge plant over five years costs $96 per MWh on solid oxide fuel cells, $104 on gas reciprocating engines and $112 on aeroderivative gas turbines at 85% utilization and $3.78/MMBtu, with first power in 17, 27 and 30 months, per Open Factory's MEP Cost Table in 2026.

Week of March 16, 2026

  • Article. Nox Metals: The Detroit Startup Cutting Aluminum Plate in 36 Hours. Nox Metals quotes saw-cut aluminum plate instantly and delivers in an average of 36 hours, against the 3 to 5 days a typical service center takes to quote, after an $11.5 million seed on 14 June 2026, and Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor lists cut plate as its first raw material.

Week of March 9, 2026

  • Article. The 2 MW Plant Service Upgrade Nobody Budgets Right. A 400-person plant adding 2 MW of service pays $400k to $1.2M for the items the switchgear quote omits, and with the utility-owned pad-mount at 52 to 104 weeks the crane lands in week 74. Open Factory's Large-Load Cost Table shows the sequencing that pulls energization forward by 20 weeks.
  • Article. Chillers Are the 60-Week Problem. A water-cooled chiller over 1,000 tons quotes at 50 to 70 weeks in the United States as of May 22, 2026, an air-cooled machine over 500 tons at 40 to 60 weeks, and Census M3 puts HVAC unfilled orders at $18.6 billion in July 2026, per Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor.
  • Article. What a Haas VF-2 Really Costs in 2026. A new Haas VF-2 lists at $70,995, which is 35% of the roughly $172,523 net ten-year bill for a one-shift job shop once maintenance, one spindle, power, coolant and cutting tools are added, per Open Factory's Bid-Tab Price Book worked example as of September 2026.
  • Reading. Datacenter MEP Cost Table headline: $9.8M per MW. All-in build cost, Phoenix and Columbus. Source: Turner & Townsend, Data Centre Construction Cost Index 2025, cost per watt by market; compiled 13 March 2026 for Chillers Are the 60-Week Problem. Component lines are Pro.

Week of March 2, 2026

Week of February 9, 2026

  • Article. Copper at $6.77: How a 50% Tariff Shows Up in a 200-Amp Panel. COMEX copper set a record $6.77 per pound on August 7, 2026, and Open Factory's panel math shows a 200-amp residential service that carried $270 of copper at 2024 prices now carries $440, about $30 of it the tariff expectation priced into COMEX.

Week of February 2, 2026

  • Article. The Used and Refurbished Market Nobody Indexes. Fifteen vendors bid $41,200 to $101,253 on one 2,500 kVA pad-mount transformer for Fayetteville's public utility in September 2025, a 2.5x spread at 10 to 35 week lead times, and a dealer shipping from stock lists it at $104,000, 1.77x the median bid, per Open Factory's Bid-Tab Price Book.

Week of January 5, 2026

  • Article. 1872, Foundational Industries and Hadrian: Three Blueprints for the Autonomous American Factory. Between July 2025 and August 2026, 1872, Foundational Industries and Hadrian raised $1.41 billion to build autonomous American factories: $15 million, $25 million and $1.37 billion respectively, with Hadrian's four plants totalling just under 3 million square feet. Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor will track each one's delivered lead time.
  • Article. Japan Is Eating the US Capex Boom. Japanese machine tool builders booked JPY 40.65 billion of North American orders in June 2026, up 44% from June 2025, and in the first half of 2026 US buyers sent them $1.29 billion of the $3.44 billion placed for metalworking machinery, 37 cents of every dollar, by Open Factory's arithmetic.
  • Article. Who Bought the EV Plants' Machines. Companies cancelled, closed or downsized 61 US clean-energy projects worth $34.8 billion in 2025, but most was never built, and the EV plant machines that did reach the secondary market sold at 3% to 37% of reference value in the court records Open Factory read.
  • Article. When a Megapack Beats a Static UPS. A 24 MW, 48 MWh block of twelve Tesla Megapack 2 XL units costs about $14.4 million installed at January 2026 prices, $10.1 million after the 30% storage credit, against about $17.5 million for the N+1 static UPS in a 20 MW hall, per Open Factory's Datacenter MEP Cost Table.

Week of December 22, 2025

  • Article. The OEM Disclosure Scorecard: Who Tells Buyers Anything. Open Factory's OEM Disclosure Scorecard version 0.1 finds that the eighteen largest electrical, power and cooling OEMs publish only 12 of 90 cells a buyer needs, with 16 Partials and 62 Noes: GE Vernova alone scores 2 of 5, ten score 1 and seven score 0, as of September 2026.

Week of December 15, 2025

  • Article. Rockwell's 250 Basis Points: How Tariffs Show Up in Your PLC Quote. Tariffs are 100 basis points of a Rockwell Automation bill in fiscal 2026, inside the 250 basis points of total price the company guided on its August 4, 2026 call, and Open Factory's Bid-Tab Price Book tracks the pass-through against the 150 basis points of underlying price.
  • Article. What Hyperscaler Nuclear PPAs Tell a Factory Negotiating a 15-Year Contract. Microsoft pays about $112 per MWh for 835 MW from the Crane nuclear restart on a 20-year contract, a 70 to 90% premium to wholesale, so Open Factory's Large-Load Cost Table treats that as the reference price for a 15-year factory power contract as of December 2025.

Week of December 1, 2025

  • Article. Datacenter Construction Is Eating Your Electricians. Loudoun County electrical contractor payrolls rose 138% from 5,615 people in 2019 to 14,022 in March 2026, while the national BLS median electrician wage rose 12.5% against 25.6% CPI from May 2019 to May 2025, per Open Factory's Large-Load Cost Table.

Week of November 24, 2025

  • Article. Why Your Switchgear Costs 50% More Than in 2021. The BLS producer price index for switchgear stood at 394.8 in July 2026, 78% above January 2021, and medium-voltage switchgear is up 50% since 2021 per Wood Mackenzie. Open Factory's decomposition finds inputs explain 36 of the 78 points and margin the other 43.
  • Article. The 30% Fuel-Cell ITC Is the Last Federal Subsidy for On-Site Power. Since July 4, 2025, the 30% federal investment credit survives only for fuel cells among gas-fired on-site power, with wind and solar needing construction by July 4, 2026 and gas CHP getting nothing, and Open Factory's math turns a 2.5-year payback at $210/MWh in California into 1.7 years.

Week of November 10, 2025

  • Article. Vertiv Stopped Reporting Its Backlog. Here Is Our Estimate. Open Factory estimates Vertiv's unpublished order backlog at $16 to $20 billion at June 30, 2026, central case about $17.4 billion, up from the last reported $15.0 billion at December 31, 2025, with current deferred revenue doubling from $1.81 billion to $3.63 billion in six months.

Week of October 20, 2025

  • Article. Transformer Lead Times Hit 143 Weeks: Who Gets Delivered First. A generator step-up transformer ordered in the United States was quoted at 143 weeks in the second quarter of 2025, a substation power transformer at 128 weeks and medium-voltage switchgear at 44, per Wood Mackenzie, against about 50 weeks in 2021, and Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor lists both readings.

Week of October 13, 2025

  • Article. Quote Check: What Your Switchgear Quote Should Have Said. Open Factory's Quote Check tool places a switchgear quote against public awards: Riverside Public Utilities paid $2,254,387.50 for a 15 kV metal-clad lineup in May 2025, 52% above the $1,481,321 median of 12 public awards dated December 2016 to May 2025 in the Public Bid-Tab Price Book.

Week of October 6, 2025

  • Article. One Steel Mill Gates Every US Transformer. Every pound of domestic grain-oriented electrical steel in a US transformer core is melted at Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works, a plant with a 920 mm maximum coil width, and the transformer PPI is up 91% since December 2019 at 381.8 in July 2026, per Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor.
  • Article. MES Is a Consulting Product. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has paid $110.1 million for MES support services since May 2021 against $4.64 million of Oracle licences in FY2025, about five dollars of consulting per dollar of software, the pattern Open Factory found across 44 public MES and SCADA awards as of October 2025.
  • Article. Tariff Bill of Materials: What Sections 232 and 301 Add to a UPS, a Lineup, a Genset and a Megapack. A 1 MW UPS assembled in the United States carries about 17 points of duty and the same UPS imported from China carries 55, under the tariff stack in force on October 10, 2025. The 50% copper tariff is 3.8 of those 17 points, per Open Factory's Tariff Exposure Calculator.

Week of September 29, 2025

  • Article. The Copper and Wire Price Sheet, Weekly. Open Factory's Copper and Wire Price Sheet, refreshed every Monday, prices a foot of 500 kcmil copper at $9.48 of metal at the IMF's $6.14 a pound for July 2026, or $9.70 at that month's $6.28 COMEX open, with a price per foot for 13 conductor sizes.
  • Article. Introducing the Large-Load Cost Table: 15 Markets Side by Side. Open Factory's Large-Load Cost Table, version 0.1, compares a 50 MW connection across 15 US utilities on eight tariff cells each: 53 of the 120 cells come from primary documents, 20 from trade press, 2 from arithmetic, and 45 are not published anywhere, as of August 2026.
  • Article. The $2,850 Report That Says Nothing. IBISWorld's $2,850 ProcurementIQ switchgear report prices the whole category at one $37,300 benchmark, while the 118 public awards in Open Factory's Public Bid-Tab Price Book run from $12,492 for a pad-mount switch in 2019 to $3,827,000 for a 34.5 kV lineup in September 2024.

Week of September 22, 2025

  • Article. Building the Missing Index: Realized Auction Prices for Used CNC Machines. Used CNC machines lose about half their hammer value every 3.9 years, based on 144 realized auction lots from June 2023 to September 2026 in Open Factory's Bid-Tab Price Book, and a five-year-old Haas VF-2SS hammered at $36,600 in November 2025, 43.6% of its $83,995 list price.

Week of September 15, 2025

  • Article. Introducing the Public Bid-Tab Price Book. Open Factory's Public Bid-Tab Price Book launches as version 0.1 with 2,712 public award lines and 51 price bands, and across 297 lines dated January 2024 to August 2026 the median three-phase pad-mount price runs from $153 per kVA at 75 to 167 kVA to $30 at 1,500 to 2,500.
  • Article. Cummins and Caterpillar Are Sold Out Through 2028. Cummins is taking generator orders well into 2028 and Caterpillar closed June 2026 with $72.1 billion of firm backlog, and Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor shows published lead times of 50 to 66 weeks for a 1,500 to 2,000 kW diesel genset and 90 to 110 weeks above 3,500 kW.

Week of September 8, 2025

  • Article. The 171-Day Capex Lead Time: ISM's Most Ignored Table. The average US manufacturing buyer commits to capital equipment 171 days ahead of need in the August 2026 ISM report, with 27% committing more than a year out, against 147 days in December 2019. Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor rebuilds the series back to 2007.
  • Article. Book-to-Bill League Table, Q2 2026: Every Electrical OEM. Powell Industries posted a book-to-bill of 3.0 in the quarter to June 30 2026, booking $934 million of switchgear orders against $312 million shipped, and all eight electrical OEMs that print a ratio sit above 1.0, down to Eaton at 1.2, in Open Factory's Book-to-Bill League Table.
  • Article. Introducing the Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor. Schneider Electric quotes low-voltage switchgear at 50 weeks from release to manufacturing in its September 2026 Lead Times Guide, and Open Factory's Lead-Time Monitor, launched as version 0.1, puts all eleven equipment classes in one table, of which only four have an OEM-published lead time.