{"slug": "inside-hd-hyundai-electrics-ai-power-push", "title": "Inside HD Hyundai Electric’s AI power push", "summary": "HD Hyundai Electric opened an automated circuit breaker plant in Cheongju, South Korea, investing 116.1 billion won to boost production for AI data centers. The facility consolidates operations and uses robotics to produce over 50,000 types of low- and medium-voltage circuit breakers, aiming to meet surging global demand for power distribution equipment.", "body_md": "Automated Cheongju campus boosts circuit breaker output as AI data centers demand faster, more reliable power equipment supply\n\nCheongju, NORTH CHUNGCHEONG PROVINCE -- Stepping inside HD Hyundai Electric’s new power distribution complex in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, the future of electricity looks less like a thundering heavy-industry floor than a tightly orchestrated network of robotics arms and autonomous carriers moving across the plant.\n\nDuring a media tour of the Cheongju Power Distribution Campus on Thursday, workers in a control room overlooking operations sat before real-time screens that tracked energy use, material flows, warehouse inventory and production output. The numbers were more than factory data. They represented HD Hyundai Electric’s bet that the next wave of the global power equipment boom will move closer to the end users of electricity — factories, buildings and most importantly, AI data centers.\n\n“As power demand from AI data centers is rising globally, we are also feeling firsthand that demand for distribution equipment is increasing sharply worldwide,” said Lee Chang-ho, senior executive vice president leading the power distribution division at HD Hyundai Electric, during a press conference at the Cheongju campus.\n\nFor years, HD Hyundai Electric, the electric equipment unit of HD Hyundai Group, has been best known for its large power transformers, riding the surging grid investment in North America and Europe. But at Cheongju, the company’s focus shifts further downstream to smaller, more numerous devices that distribute, switch and protect electricity at the point of use.\n\nBuilt on an 85,420-square meter site in an industrial complex in Cheongju, the facility produces low- and medium-voltage circuit breakers. The company invested 116.1 billion won ($75.6 million) in the facility, which began operations after its completion in November.\n\nThe Cheongju campus is more than a new factory. It consolidates HD Hyundai Electric’s previously scattered circuit breaker operations, bringing together production lines from Anseong, Gyeonggi Province, design functions from Ulsan and warehouse operations from Busan under one roof.\n\nThe Anseong factory has already been shuttered, with its production absorbed by Cheongju. HD Hyundai Electric is now considering going further, reviewing whether to relocate remaining power distribution operations — including switchgear and distribution transformer plants in Ulsan — to Cheongju as part of a longer-term effort to build the campus into a central hub for distribution equipment.\n\nThe Cheongju plant can produce more than 50,000 types of low-and medium-voltage circuit breakers and related switching devices, ranging from air circuit breakers to vacuum circuit breakers and molded case circuit breakers, miniature circuit breakers and magnetic switches.\n\nAutomation on the factory floor\n\nThat complexity was visible from the first floor, where it produces ACBs and VCBs.\n\nIn the ACB section, workers assembled products alongside automated equipment, while autonomous mobile robots carried parts to each station. Park Sung-jin, a senior manager in charge of the ACB line, said the product is installed in distribution panels at large buildings, factories and other facilities to protect loads by cutting off fault currents.\n\n“This line is for high-mix, low-volume production because we receive orders in many different specifications,” said Park, noting that workers often assemble different models at the same time.\n\nAfter assembly, the products go through repeated opening and closing tests, performance checks and visual inspection, using a camera and a QR code.\n\n“Each product goes through about 30 opening and closing tests,\" said Park. \"With so many models and options, doing that manually would have taken too long and left too much room for error.\"\n\nOn a separate line, the facility’s largest products, VCBs underwent high-voltage testing. As current surged through the equipment up to 80,000 volts, a sharp electrical crackle filled the room.\n\n“VCBs are used for high voltage; they often serve as main circuit breakers in large buildings,” said Kim Won-sam, senior manager in charge of the VCB line. “Recently, these are increasingly being used in AI data centers.”\n\nMoving to the finished goods warehouse, automation reached another level. Autonomous case-handling robots, known as “high-picking robots,” retrieved products from upper shelves rising more than 10 meters, while smaller Kiva-style logistic shuttles glided beneath storage racks and carried boxes to workers for shipment preparation.\n\nThe warehouse uses a goods-to-person system, meaning products come to workers rather than workers walking through aisles to find them. The company said it operates 10 autonomous case-handling robots and 20 Kiva-type shuttles. The logistics system was built with LG CNS.\n\nAutomation was even more visible on the second floor, where the plant produces MCCBs and magnetic switches. The company said the automation level on the second floor stands at about 95 percent, compared with 65 percent on the first floor.\n\nOn the MCCB line, rows of articulated robots assembled the products, while vision systems inspected all units before and after assembly, preventing defective products from being shipped.\n\nSpeed becomes edge in data center demand\n\nThat high level of automation is central to HD Hyundai Electric’s plan to expand output and respond more quickly to rising demand at home and abroad.\n\nThe company said the Cheongju campus has raised its annual production capacity for low-and medium-voltage circuit breakers by about 70 percent, from roughly 5 million units to 8.5 million units. By 2030, it aims to raise that figure to 13 million units.\n\nLee said the increased capacity and shorter lead times position HD Hyundai Electric to win more orders in the global data center market.\n\n“Through the Cheongju campus, we can offer far more competitive lead times than rivals based on our expanded capacity,” he said. “This is a major advantage in the data center market where speed is crucial.”\n\nFor 38-kilovolt VCBs used in high-spec data center projects in the US, lead times among existing suppliers are generally more than a year, Lee said. HD Hyundai Electric can offer about half of that, he added\n\nThe company has secured several meaningful data center-related contracts this year, although Lee declined to identify customers, citing confidentiality requirements. He said HD Hyundai Electric's ability to supply both power equipment and distribution equipment as a package gives it another edge.\n\nAsked whether the company could build a distribution equipment facility in the US, Lee said no decision has been made, though it is reviewing local production as part of its longer-term global strategy.\n\nHD Hyundai Electric already operates a power transformer plant in Montgomery, Alabama, and is expanding the site to meet strong demand. But it does not currently have a power distribution equipment plant in the US.\n\nsahn@heraldcorp.com", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/inside-hd-hyundai-electrics-ai-power-push", "canonical_source": "https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10790457", "published_at": "2026-06-28 05:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-28 05:09:22.097876+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "robotics", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-products", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["HD Hyundai Electric", "HD Hyundai Group", "Cheongju Power Distribution Campus", "Lee Chang-ho", "Park Sung-jin", "Anseong", "Ulsan", "Busan"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/inside-hd-hyundai-electrics-ai-power-push", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/inside-hd-hyundai-electrics-ai-power-push.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/inside-hd-hyundai-electrics-ai-power-push.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/inside-hd-hyundai-electrics-ai-power-push.jsonld"}}