Trench Group’s HSP Unit Starts Full Bushing Production at Its $60 Million Charlotte Factory
- Medium-Voltage Switchgear News Power Electronics
Marin Holt
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- 7 minutes read
- Investment: $60 million
- Annual capacity: up to 3,500 bushings
- Voltage range: 25 kV to 765 kV
- Jobs by 2030: up to 140
HSP US, the North American subsidiary of Germany’s Trench Group, began full production of high-voltage transformer bushings in July 2026 at its $60 million factory in southwest Charlotte, North Carolina, the company’s first full-scale manufacturing site in the United States. The plant is the group’s tenth production location worldwide and its third in North America, and it opened as data-center load drives a nationwide shortage of the transformers and components utilities need to expand the grid.
The roughly 20,000-square-meter plant is designed to build up to 3,500 dry-type transformer bushings a year across the 25 kV to 765 kV range. Bushings are the insulated components that carry high-voltage connections into and out of a transformer, and they have become a bottleneck alongside the transformers themselves. Assembly started in February 2026 with 25 employees, and HSP US has said the site will grow to as many as 140 engineering and manufacturing jobs by 2030 at an average wage of $77,315, supported by an apprenticeship program with Central Piedmont Community College. First deliveries of 230 kV bushings are scheduled for the end of 2026, with 765 kV units following in early 2028.
The factory sits in southwest Charlotte near Siemens Energy’s new switchgear plant, part of a cluster of grid-equipment investment landing in the Carolinas. HSP US built the site to be Buy America compliant, which lets utility customers pair the bushings with federal infrastructure funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Trench Group has said North American orders made up more than 40 percent of its first-quarter 2026 order intake, and in May the company reported a contract for 765 kV instrument transformers tied to a Texas transmission buildout.
Why It Matters
Transformer bushings rarely make headlines, but a missing bushing stalls a finished transformer just as surely as a missing core. Long import lead times for high-voltage bushings have added months to grid projects at a moment when utilities are racing to interconnect data centers and new generation. Domestic output that qualifies for Buy America funding gives US utilities a shorter, federally backed supply line for a part that has quietly become a chokepoint, and it puts a second grid-equipment anchor next to Siemens Energy in the Charlotte manufacturing base.
Critical Perspective
HSP US started assembly in February 2026 with 25 employees and is building toward a line rated at up to 3,500 bushings a year, but the first 230 kV deliveries are scheduled for the end of 2026 and 765 kV units not until early 2028. Trench Group already books more than 40 percent of its first-quarter 2026 order intake in North America, so a large share of that line may go to orders the group would otherwise have filled from its existing plants rather than to the utilities now waiting on the bottleneck. Hyundai Power Transformers opened its Montgomery, Alabama factory in 2011 for the same stated reason, shortening American lead times on high-voltage equipment, and a decade later US utilities were still quoting multi-year waits because the binding constraint sat in electrical steel, skilled labor and qualification testing rather than in final assembly. Which utilities have already put an HSP bushing through type test, and how many of the 3,500 annual slots are committed before the 765 kV line runs in 2028?
Sources
- Trench Group, “Trench Group commits to America’s grid transformation” (May 2026)
- Plant Services, “HSP US invests to build bushing manufacturing plant in North Carolina”
- WCNC, “Germany-based HSP starts construction on first US plant in Charlotte”
- Area Development, “Germany-based HSP US plans Charlotte, North Carolina manufacturing operations”
