Chuck Perrine walked the floor of Hitachi Energy’s South Boston factory one morning this past summer.
It wasn’t yet afternoon, but already it had been a busy day. Company executives and employees had joined state and local leaders to ceremonially break ground on a $457 million expansion at the Halifax County location.
Perrine ascended a set of steps to a platform where two employees were winding copper around a tall core made of a special type of steel.
That core was destined to eventually join others like it inside a large metal case, called a tank, to create a power transformer.
That transformer will be installed somewhere within the large, complicated puzzle known as the nation’s electric grid, where it will perform the critical function of helping regulate the voltage of electrical current as it travels from place to place.
In a world where robots are increasingly automating how things are made, winding coils of copper is a stubbornly handcrafted skill — an art, even, according to many in the power transformer industry.
“It’s so critical that the spacing is exactly right,” Perrine said, watching as the two workers carefully wrapped the long line of metal around the core. It takes years of experience before a winder really excels at this art, he said.
Perrine is the company’s vice president of operations for power transformers in North America. His days are likely to stay busy. Hitachi Energy’s expansion includes adding more than 800 jobs and building an entirely new factory, scheduled to be completed in late 2028.
It’s just one example of the rapid growth taking place in Virginia’s power transformer manufacturing industry. One commonly cited reason is the booming buildout of data centers, the electricity-hungry buildings full of computer servers that power the modern online world.
But there are other reasons: Population growth. The electrification of manufacturing. New power generation, such as large-scale solar and natural gas plants, coming online. An aging electric grid in need of replacements and upgrades. Pent-up demand after the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
To meet these demands while tackling challenges such as growing production backlogs and a reliance on foreign supply chains, power transformer manufacturers are adding thousands of new jobs in the U.S., including in Virginia.
Lynchburg-based Delta Star is adding more than 400 jobs in a multiphase expansion that includes a new metal fabrication plant and a new corporate headquarters.
Delta Star recently announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Fort Mill, South Carolina-based MacLean Power Systems during what Delta Star’s CEO said is a period of “unprecedented, explosive growth” in electrical infrastructure.
Roanoke-based Virginia Transformer Corp. has nearly tripled its employment in the past four years. In July 2022, it had 1,800 employees companywide, of whom 450 were in Virginia. Today, it has 5,900 employees companywide, of whom 1,200 are in Virginia.
Virginia Transformer also recently announced a new factory planned for Alabama and a factory expansion in Georgia. Together, the two projects will add 1,500 jobs to the company’s payroll.
“Our growth is driven by the desires of our customers,” said company spokesperson Kevin Lowery.
In Wytheville, Florida-based JST Power Equipment this year cut the ribbon on a power transformer factory, bringing 50 jobs initially with more anticipated as production ramps up in the coming years.
Meanwhile, at Hitachi, the first orders for large power transformers from the yet-to-be-built new factory are already filling up, Perrine says, and lead times for the medium-size transformers that Hitachi makes at its existing plant have stretched from 12 to 16 weeks to around 80 weeks.
“I’ve been in the industry for over 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Perrine said.
What do power transformers do?
Power lines are a highly visible part of the electric grid. Larger transmission lines supported by towers carry electricity over long distances, while smaller distribution lines run along streets and through neighborhoods to bring that electricity the “last mile” to homes and businesses.
Comparing power lines to roads, transmission lines are like highways, and distribution lines are like local streets.
Transformers are less visible than power lines but no less vital. They’re similar to the on-ramps and off-ramps that connect highways and local roads.
Just as a highway ramp takes a driver from a 45-mph local road to a 65-mph highway, or vice versa, so do power transformers “step up” or “step down” the voltage of the electricity carried on a line.
Electricity needs to be at a high voltage to prevent it from losing power as it travels from one point to another, such as from a power plant to a house. After electricity leaves the power plant, transformers step up the voltage using an electromagnetic field created by running alternating current through the coils that have been so painstakingly wound.
But the house at the end of the electricity’s journey can’t safely handle such high voltages, just like a small neighborhood street can’t safely handle a driver who continues to move at highway speed. So, before the electricity gets to the end of the line, transformers step down the voltage.
A high-voltage interstate transmission line can go up to 765 kilovolts, or 765,000 volts. By the time electricity gets to a house, the power has stepped down to 240 volts for large appliances such as clothes dryers and 120 volts for smaller appliances such as televisions.
Transformers come in a variety of sizes but can generally be categorized as small, medium or large.
Small power transformers can be found attached to neighborhood utility poles.
Anyone who’s driven by an electric substation in their town has likely seen a medium transformer — they’re essentially big gray metal boxes mounted on pads, with antenna-like bushings sticking out; the bushings provide insulating protection that’s crucial for a transformer’s safe operation.
Larger transformers support heavy industries and help move electricity across long distances.
The size of a transformer can vary based on the electrical capacity and other design specifics that its purchaser requires. Some medium transformers, for example, might be 6 feet to 10 feet tall, while a large transformer could be the size of a small house.
Different sizes and specs come with different costs, with some transformers carrying price tags in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and others in the millions.
Regardless of the size, it’s what’s inside that counts: the coils, cores and other components that play the crucial role of regulating the voltage of electricity.
Although transformers might not be the most visible piece of the power picture, the grid couldn’t function without them.
“They are a big part, an integral part of the power system because essentially all the power that we use is going to be processed through these transformers,” said Ali Mehrezi-Sani, a professor and director of the Power and Energy Center at Virginia Tech. “So whether you are sitting at home, whether you are in your office, any power that you use essentially has gone through at least two sets of transformers, many times more.”
They also need to be resilient and able to operate around the clock for decades.
“Transformers are very highly engineered pieces of equipment,” said Lowery, of Virginia Transformer Corp. “When you turn them on, they pretty much don’t turn off.”
Grid growth fuels expansions
Hitachi Energy’s investment in Halifax County will add 825 jobs by the time the new factory is completed in 2028. Before last year’s announcement of the expansion, it employed 670 people there.
It’s also adding 120 jobs at its locations in Bland and Smyth counties.
The Switzerland-based company says that its new production facility in South Boston will make it the United States’ biggest manufacturer of large power transformers.
Hitachi Energy’s existing South Boston factory produces about eight medium power transformers each month and will expand to produce about 12 per month over the next year, Perrine said.
Perrine estimated that one transformer takes about four months from the time someone starts making a coil to the moment it heads out the door, including all of the testing and quality checks along the way.
Each transformer represents 2,000 to 3,000 work-hours. After the coils are wound around their cores and the cores are placed inside a tank, moisture is drawn out of the tank. It’s then filled with insulating oil, which prevents electricity from arcing from one coil to the next. Fans cool and recirculate the oil as it absorbs heat from the transformer’s operations. A control panel outside allows the customer to see that everything is running well. Everything is checked and tested.
Meanwhile, Lynchburg-based Delta Star is adding 300 jobs in a $35 million expansion announced last year, which will bring its companywide employment to about 1,600 once everyone’s on board. That’s on top of a 149-job expansion that was announced in 2023.
The company has already completed a new corporate headquarters and a 108,000-square-foot metal fabrication facility, called Delta Ironworks, which produces 20 transformer tanks per month. Both facilities opened in June 2025.
The company will manufacture 140 power transformers this year, meeting a need from data centers, electric utilities and manufacturers, according to Asa Keimig, Delta Star’s director of corporate communications and marketing.
Delta Star’s product lines include mobile transformers, which Keimig described as the “Ferrari of the industry.” These can be moved by trailer to a site as needed to respond to emergencies, such as wildfires, or so utilities can perform maintenance without service interruption. Typically, a mobile transformer commands a premium price compared to a standard power transformer, but Keimig said the high demand for transformers overall is closing that gap.
“There’s such a demand across North America for power, especially in the transmission and distribution side,” Keimig said. “The industry is on fire.”
Virginia Transformer announced this year that it will build a 600,000 square-foot factory in Alabama, creating 1,100 jobs there.
That news followed an announcement of a factory expansion in Georgia that the company says will increase its production capacity there by 50% and create about 400 jobs. The company bills itself as the largest U.S.-owned manufacturer of electrical power transformers in North America.
While its latest major announcements are outside Virginia, the company has steadily increased its employment in the commonwealth at the same time, said Lowery, the Virginia Transformer spokesperson.
Going from 1,800 employees in 2022 to 5,900 today means the company has more than tripled its employment in four years, with more new hires on the way.
The company maintains an office park in Roanoke, along with manufacturing plants in Roanoke and Botetourt County. It recently bought a warehouse in Botetourt County’s Eastpark Commerce Center.
Farther southwest, Lake Mary, Florida-based JST Power Equipment opened a transformer factory in Wytheville this year, spanning 45,000 square feet across two buildings. JST said that the new facility brings 35 to 50 jobs, with more expected in the years to come.
The jobs that the companies are creating represent a variety of skill sets and pay levels, from entry-level production positions to senior engineers and managers, along with administrative staff such as payroll specialists and accountants, according to a review of open jobs online.
Delta Star — to give one example — advertises about $25 to $30 per hour for assemblers, coil winders and production workers, while engineering salaries reach into the six-figure salary range.
Looking to the future
As the demand for power transformers increases, manufacturers are looking ahead to the possible workforce challenges that may arise. For example, manufacturers agree that properly training a copper winder takes time.
Perrine, at Hitachi Energy, said it takes about three years to get good at it, while Keimig, at Delta Star, said it can take seven years to be able to excel at the craft.
Lowery, of Virginia Transformer, said the amount of time needed varies by the individual worker but noted that employees “go through a lot of training before they ever go out onto the shop floor.”
“We want someone to essentially be certified before they’re actually making something that’s going to go to a customer,” Lowery said.
Transformers require not only the labor to assemble them but the engineering work to plan them out, said Mehrezi-Sani, the Virginia Tech professor. They’re typically custom-built, which means the voltage, insulation, cooling and other parameters must meet a customer’s specifications.
“We need to make sure that we have a capable workforce that can do these sorts of designs for transformers,” he said.
To help attract more employees, Hitachi is creating more flexible schedules, where workers can come in for three days at a time and work more hours each time, rather than working a traditional manufacturing day shift every weekday.
“They don’t want that Monday-to-Friday, overtime on Saturdays,” Perrine said.
Perrine said the newer schedule will appeal to younger workers who want to save on gas by not commuting every day, especially those who come from outside the area as the company seeks to fill the hundreds of jobs it’s creating. Workers also can add their days off to paid vacation time for longer breaks.
Power transformer manufacturers expect strong demand to continue for the foreseeable future — “otherwise we wouldn’t be doing these expansions,” Lowery said.
The demand is expected to come not just from new businesses such as data centers but from electric utilities investing in grid reliability.
“The country’s only really started putting a lot into the restructuring of the power grid in the last six, eight years,” Perrine said. “And so, we’re on that end, making new ones, replacing old ones, expanding. And it’s just an incredible business.”
