U.S. Market Developments for MV Equipment – August 2026 Update

Commercial and industrial procurement of medium-voltage (MV) equipment has picked up substantially over the recent 36 months, in large part due to three key factors: (1) the rise of commercial developments including data centers and business campuses; (2) the re-shoring and expansion of industrial facilities, and (3) the continued growth of utility-scale renewables facilities in spite of headwinds from government policy changes. The U.S. has added hundreds of new MV substations and likely added more than a thousand distribution line miles as well since 2023. This MV grid expansion and modernization effort will continue and may well increase through 2028, though much of the industry focus has necessarily been on the need to modernize and upgrade the nation’s high voltage network.
Overall, the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment of the T&D equipment and services market is currently growing as fast or faster in many MV equipment categories as is the utility market segment. Both segments are doing well in almost every one of the 17 equipment categories included in the 2026-2028 edition of the MV Market Overview Series published this week. See Figure 1 below.

Figure 1.

The C&I segment includes all non-utility owned power generation, transmission and distribution assets. Over the coming decade, more and more of the very large commercial and industrial sites are likely to become experienced owners/operators of power generation and T&D assets. Industry terms that have been around for decades including auto-generators and co-generators will again become widely associated with the developments of future data centers, commercial multi-site campuses and large industrial facilities. Utilities will be looked to for partnering, technical expertise, cooperative planning and perhaps joint power purchase agreements for constructing and maintaining non-utility-owned G, T and D assets. As time goes on, C&I buyers will continue to account for larger shares of spending for MV equipment, especially for switchgear. As MV transformers are treated separately, we have not included them in our outlook for 2028, seen as Figure 2 below.

Figure 2.