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Stay Safe Around the Big Green Box

September 8, 2025

You may have seen big green boxes in residential yards over the years and wondered what purpose they serve. Those green boxes are actually called pad-mounted transformers, and they change voltage from higher levels to a level you can use in your home for electronics, appliances and lighting. This equipment is vital to providing electricity to at least one home, and often several in a neighborhood.

Pad-mounted transformers are surrounded by underground cables that can extend in several directions to distribute power to homes and businesses, so members should not landscape or dig around these boxes. Hitting a cable could result in electrical shock or disruption of service. Children should never touch, climb or play on pad-mounted transformers and shouldn’t put fingers or sticks into cracks in the housing. Only employees from Stearns Electric Association should be near this equipment.

Homeowners sometimes try to obscure these green boxes by planting shrubs and flowers around them, but that can make them difficult to access by electric field workers and can make them dangerous. Co-op employees need at least 10 feet of clearance at the opening side of a pad-mounted transformer and 4 feet of open space is preferred at the rear and on the sides of the metal housing. That distance gives technicians enough space to use the specialized tools they need to work with energized equipment. It also ensures that one or two technicians working on a transformer have space to maneuver in case they have to back away if problems occur.

Stearns Electric employees must access a pad-mounted transformer to test, maintain, repair and replace the equipment. If a technician encounters an obstacle that could create a hazardous situation, the worker will notify the member. This may cause the work to be delayed.

In an outage situation when time is of essence, Stearns Electric employees may need to remove items blocking their way so that they can access the equipment and restore power.

One of the top priorities for Stearns Electric is to keep everyone safe and to keep electricity reliable for our member-owners. We appreciate your help in keeping electrical equipment clear of any obstacles, so our employees can stay safe and accomplish this task more efficiently.