“You can probably see why the automation rate is in the 90% range. From sorting and moving materials, robots do all this.”

On 25 June at HD Hyundai Electric’s Cheongju Power Distribution Campus medium- and low-voltage circuit breaker plant in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. Upon entering the second floor, where low-voltage circuit breakers are manufactured, autonomous logistics robots transporting materials instead of workers were immediately visible. Circuit breakers are products that cut off power when overcurrent flows through power distribution lines.

On the production line, only two to three workers per line were seen monitoring the equipment. The factory was filled with the mechanical sounds of numerous robots and facilities installed along tens of meters of conveyor belts performing assembly and other tasks in second-by-second cycles. On this 6,600㎡ floor, there were only about 30 workers in total.

The boom in power equipment driven by the North American artificial intelligence (AI) data center surge is now spreading to the power distribution equipment sector, its “counterpart.” While one or two extra-high-voltage transformers, which are power equipment, are installed in a data center, 10 to 20 distribution transformers—the “final gateway” that split this electricity and deliver it to end users—are required. In line with this boom, HD Hyundai Electric opened this plant late last year. LS ELECTRIC has also decided to expand its U.S. plant that manufactures switchgear, a power distribution device that plays the role of a household distribution board.

● Automation rate of 93% delivers ‘overwhelming productivity’

This 85,420㎡ campus, built by HD Hyundai Electric at a cost of KRW 116.1 billion, integrates in one place what had previously been dispersed nationwide: production (Anseong, Gyeonggi Province), design (Ulsan), and logistics warehouses (Busan). On the second floor, where low-voltage circuit breakers are manufactured, the average automation rate of production reaches 93%, higher than the previous 70%.

On the molded-case circuit breaker production line—responsible for protecting circuits in switchboards—up to 1,500 units are produced daily with almost no human intervention. Once the arm-shaped robots completed the assembly of components in precise coordination, various testing facilities successively checked for defects such as overcurrent. The products were then completed after passing through labelers and other equipment. Human workers, who had been monitoring the screens, became involved in the production process for the first time when they packaged the finished products.

Logistics thereafter was also handled by robots. There was not a single person inside the finished goods warehouse on the first floor of this plant. When 10 medium-sized robots that moved up and down the warehouse racks brought out finished products, 20 small robots delivered them to workers at the shipping counters. The workers only packed the finished products into boxes.

● “Cutting delivery times to half of U.S. local lead times”

HD Hyundai Electric, which holds the No. 1 position with a 25–30% share in the North American power equipment market for data centers, is leveraging its local network and product productivity to seek leadership in power distribution equipment as well. On this day, Lee Chang-ho, Executive Vice President and Head of the Power Distribution Business Division at HD Hyundai Electric, said, “There have already been three contracts this year alone that were concluded because we offered delivery lead times at half the one-year period proposed by local U.S. companies.”

The domestic industry is successively expanding production capacity in response to rapidly increasing demand for power distribution equipment. HD Hyundai Electric’s new Cheongju plant has raised annual production capacity from 5 million units at the existing Anseong plant to 8.5 million units. The goal is to increase this to 13 million units in the future.

LS ELECTRIC also held a groundbreaking ceremony on 25 June (local time) for the expansion of “LS ELECTRIC Utah” in Cedar City, Utah, United States. With an investment of KRW 250 billion, the company plans to expand the plant from the current approximately 13,000㎡ to 79,000㎡ by early next year. LS ELECTRIC stated, “The switchgear production capacity at the Utah site will increase to a level equivalent to KRW 500 billion per year.”

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