Booming Demand for Power Transformers Drives Major Manufacturing Expansion in Virginia

As electricity demand surges, power transformer manufacturing in Virginia is undergoing rapid growth, with companies adding jobs and building factories to combat production backlogs and a reliance on foreign supply chains, Cardinal News reported.

Hitachi Energy Invests $457 Million in South Boston

Hitachi Energy broke ground on a $457 million expansion at its Halifax County location in South Boston. The project adds more than 800 jobs and an entirely new factory scheduled for completion in late 2028. Chuck Perrine, the company’s vice president of operations for power transformers in North America, noted that the facility will make the company the United States’ biggest manufacturer of large power transformers once finished.

The existing South Boston factory produces about eight medium power transformers each month and will expand to about 12 per month over the next year. Perrine stated that lead times for medium-size transformers have stretched from 12 to 16 weeks to approximately 80 weeks. Each transformer takes about four months to build and represents 2,000 to 3,000 work-hours.

Delta Star and Virginia Transformer Corp Accelerate Hiring

Delta Star recently agreed to be acquired by MacLean Power Systems during a period of unprecedented growth in electrical infrastructure. The company completed a new corporate headquarters and a 108,000-square-foot metal fabrication facility called Delta Ironworks, which produces 20 transformer tanks per month.

Roanoke-based Virginia Transformer Corp. has nearly tripled its employment in the past four years, growing from 1,800 employees companywide in July 2022 to 5,900 employees today, with 1,200 of them in Virginia. The company announced a new factory planned for Alabama and a factory expansion in Georgia, which will add 1,500 jobs combined. Meanwhile, Florida-based JST Power Equipment opened a power transformer factory in Wytheville this year, adding 50 jobs initially.

Grid Demands and Transformer Functions Shape Production

The manufacturing boom is driven by data centers, population growth, the electrification of manufacturing, new power generation like solar and natural gas, and an aging electric grid. Transformers perform the critical function of stepping up or stepping down the voltage of electrical current as it travels across transmission and distribution lines. Ali Mehrezi-Sani, a professor and director of the Power and Energy Center at Virginia Tech, explained that essentially all power used goes through at least two sets of transformers, and often more.