Copper Is Up 20.9 Percent in a Year. Here Is What That Does to an Electrical Budget.

The federal government publishes a monthly measure of what American manufacturers charge for their products. It is called the Producer Price Index, and almost nobody outside of procurement reads it. The August 2026 edition came out on September 10, and in three lines it explains why the electrical number on your project came back higher than the one you were quoted last year.

What the federal numbers say

Over the twelve months from August 2025 to August 2026, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports these increases in what manufacturers charge (BLS Producer Price Index, August 2026):

• Copper and brass mill shapes, up 20.9 percent. This is the raw copper stock that wire, bus bar and connectors are made from.
• Nonferrous wire and cable, up 19.6 percent. The wire itself.
• Switchgear, switchboard and industrial controls equipment, up 12.3 percent. Switchgear is the large equipment that takes incoming power into a building and splits it out to everything else. It is the single most expensive item in most commercial electrical scopes.

Those are year-over-year figures, which flatten out how uneven the rise has been. August alone was steep. Copper and brass mill shapes rose 3.5 percent in that one month, and switchgear rose 2.4 percent in that one month. You can see the monthly index values yourself for copper and brass mill shapes and for switchgear and switchboard equipment, which went from 420.184 in July to 430.247 in August.

One number we could not pin down, so we are not printing it. Two separate readings of that same BLS release gave two different twelve-month figures for transformers and power regulators, one of them roughly three times the other. We are not going to pick the one we like. What we can verify from the published index is that the transformer series jumped from 416.959 in June to 434.315 in July, which is about 4 percent in a single month, and then sat essentially flat at 434.493 in August (transformers and power regulators index). If a transformer is central to your budget, read the release yourself rather than taking our word or anyone else's.

What this actually means for a quote in your hand

It means a number has a shelf life now, and the shelf life is shorter than most owners assume.

When copper moves 3.5 percent in a month, a bid written in June and awarded in October is not the same bid. A contractor who holds that price is either eating the difference or built enough cushion in to make the original number uncompetitive. Neither of those is good for you. The honest version is a quote that says plainly how long the material pricing holds and what happens after that.

Ask for that date. If a proposal does not say how long its material pricing is good for, that is not a cleaner contract, it is an unanswered question that surfaces later.

The wait is the bigger problem

Price is the visible half. The half that breaks schedules is lead time, meaning the wait between placing an order and the equipment arriving on site.

Published trackers do not agree on how long that wait is right now, and the spread is wide enough to matter. One industry index puts a distribution or pad-mounted transformer at 30 weeks, low-voltage switchgear at 54 weeks, switchboards at 32 to 41 weeks and panelboards at 21 to 32 weeks (VAWN electrical equipment lead time index). A pad-mounted transformer is the utility's transformer that sits on a concrete pad outside the building. Another set of procurement data, drawn from actual manufacturer slot reservations in June 2026, puts pad-mounted transformers in the 0 to 5 MVA range at 40 to 65 weeks against a historical norm of roughly 8 weeks, and medium-voltage switchgear at 52 to 80 weeks against roughly 24 weeks before the pandemic (IndustrialSage, reporting Terrapin Construction Group data).

Thirty weeks and sixty-five weeks are not the same answer for the same piece of equipment, and we will not pretend we know which is right for your job. The practical consequence is the same either way: do not plan a schedule off a published index. Get a quoted delivery date in writing from the actual supplier for the actual equipment, and get it before the schedule is committed to a tenant, a lender or a closing date.

Five things to do differently

None of these require you to become an expert in commodity markets.

1. Find out what your existing electrical service can carry, before you design anything. Service capacity means how much electrical load the building's incoming power can support. If the answer is that you have room, you may avoid the transformer and the switchgear entirely, which removes the worst of the price exposure and the whole lead time problem in one move. This is the cheapest decision on the project and it is the one most often skipped.

2. Release the long-wait items early, separately from the rest. A long-lead item is simply a piece of equipment with a delivery wait long enough to drive the schedule. Ordering switchgear does not have to wait for the light fixture selections to be finalized. Splitting the order is a small amount of extra paperwork and it can save a season.

3. Ask every bidder for the delivery date, not just the price. Two numbers that look close can be four months apart on delivery. A bid that is slightly higher with a confirmed slot is usually the cheaper job.

4. Decide up front who carries the increase. Contracts handle this with an escalation clause, which is language setting out what happens to the price if material costs move past an agreed point before the equipment is bought. Owners often resist it. The alternative is not a lower price, it is a bidder who guessed at the risk and priced the guess.

5. Do not order gear before a grant is approved. If any state money is part of your plan, buying early to beat a lead time can disqualify the cost. The NJEDA Take Charge program page currently reads "Coming Soon," with no application open date announced (NJEDA Take Charge). That conflict between a long delivery wait and a rule against early purchase is real, it has no clean answer, and it is worth raising with the program before you place an order rather than after.

Two other items from this week

The Board of Public Utilities opened its implementation of the Advanced Grid Technologies Act. Notice issued September 17, meeting September 30, written comments due October 16 (NJBPU public notices). This is state oversight of utility transmission spending rather than anything you file for, but if your project depends on a utility upgrade, the rules for reviewing those upgrades are being written now.

On the code side, nothing changed. New Jersey remains on the 2023 National Electrical Code with amendments 1 through 13, alongside the 2024 building and mechanical codes and ASHRAE 90.1-2022, all adopted August 17, 2026 (NJ DCA current codes).

What we tell clients

The equipment market is not something you or we control. What is controllable is how early you find out which pieces of equipment your project actually needs.

Almost every expensive surprise we see starts the same way. Somebody commits to a date or signs a lease, then the electrical room gets opened and the service will not carry the load. At that point the fix involves the two categories that went up the most and wait the longest. Open the electrical room first. It costs the least, and it is the only step that can remove the problem instead of managing it.

Zimick Electric LLC is a commercial electrical contractor in Englewood, New Jersey, serving Bergen, Hudson, Essex and Passaic counties. NJ Electrical Contractor License 34EB01813400, Business Permit 18134. IBEW Local 164 signatory. (201) 350-6215.

Price figures in this article come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index release for August 2026, published September 10, 2026, and from the underlying index series, read September 21, 2026. The twelve-month change for transformers and power regulators is omitted because two readings of the same release disagreed and we could not resolve it against the primary text. Lead time figures come from two published industry trackers that disagree with each other, and are presented as such rather than as a forecast for any specific project. Program status, code editions and the NJBPU notice dates were verified against the linked government pages on September 21, 2026. Material prices, lead times and program rules change without notice. Confirm delivery dates with your supplier and program terms with the agency before committing to a scope.