A year ago, Jason Huang was pretty sure his advanced conductor company was going to build its second U.S. factory in Michigan. The company — TS Conductor — even applied for and won a grant from the Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, to construct the facility on the shores of Lake Erie.
But then, last summer, TS Conductor visited South Carolina for one last look at alternatives, and changed its mind.
South Carolina rolled out the red carpet treatment. The state’s governor and the secretary of commerce were on site and extremely supportive. They offered up what Huang, the company’s founder and CEO, described as a “very generous incentive package.”
For instance, as a part of the state’s funding for recruiting and training new workers, South Carolina offers the opportunity to develop tailored curriculums at local technical colleges. That part was particularly appealing, Huang told Latitude Media, given how challenging it is to find skilled manufacturing talent. TS Conductor already works with local community colleges in Southern California, where its first manufacturing plant is located, Huang added, “but normally they don’t go quite that far to accommodate.”
Another key benefit was that the chosen site is right on the border between South Carolina and Georgia, and only 15 minutes away from Savannah, which is a growing manufacturing hub that also features a container port and several skilled training centers. Huang is hoping that proximity will make it easier for TS Conductor to conduct the “monumental job” of recruiting the some 500 direct employees it will ultimately need to run the factory.
These conversations coincided with a nationwide surge in demand for energy, due in part to the growing data center sector. That load growth requires grid equipment, including the advanced conductors that are TS Conductor’s focus. So by the end of last summer , Huang said it was as if “all the stars [were] lining up” for the company to break ground on the $134-million factory sometime in 2025 — and start rolling its made-in-America advanced grid tech off the assembly line not long after.
But in the months between that decision and the site’s ribbon cutting ceremony earlier this month, TS Conductor’s situation has shifted dramatically.
For one thing, although the company was initially able to transfer its $28.2 million DOE grant over to the site in South Carolina, that award is now “on hold.”
That grant was specifically for the manufacturing of conductors for high power transmission lines, which are in increasingly high demand to help support new large loads on the grid, like data centers. Producing those very large HVDC conductors requires specialized manufacturing equipment and processes that are distinct from those used for standard AC transmission lines, Huang explained. That equipment is extremely expensive, but would help TS Conductor address a critical national problem: the massive backlog of energy projects waiting to connect to the grid.
That’s why the company initially sought federal funding, Huang said. But now, it’s unclear if and when that money will become available. “We actually had to plan forward, even without the DOE support,” he explained. (That’s despite the fact that the project is “directly aligned with the priorities of the current administration,” he added.)
TS Conductor still plans to bring the first phase of the factory online by the end of this year, but without the DOEs support, things will look a little different.
“If we do not have the DOE support, we probably will scale back and won’t do these more expensive, large manufacturing equipment for the large conductors,” he said. “We might be scaling back for the first year, and looking at how situations are in year two and year three as far as ramping up.”
Tariff trouble
TS Conductor, founded in 2018, has grown rapidly in the last several years, in line with massive utility demand for solutions to the transmission problem. The company turned a profit at just five years old — no small feat for a hardware manufacturer.
Their product features a carbon fiber composite core, wrapped in a layer of aluminum. According to Huang, those conductors solve many of the inherent limitations of traditional conductors, like thermal sag, which decreases line capacity and can pose a safety risk. They’re also much cheaper than the industry-standard tech, in part because their core materials are more widely used beyond the energy sector. At present, a significant portion of U.S. transmission tech is imported, largely from Mexico and China.
However, while TS Conductor is an American company incorporated in California, the reality is that the manufacturing supply chain for their hero product extends outside of the country, Huang said. That means that the company has to import not only the bulk of their advanced manufacturing equipment, but also their raw materials.
Around 90% of the aluminum that TS Conductor currently uses in its California factory (and plans to use in South Carolina) is imported, Huang explained, largely from Canada. The 25% tariff on Canadian aluminum is an unplanned added expense that’s having “a major impact” on operations, he added.
In South Carolina, where the company plans to build more than a million square feet of factory space, most of the manufacturing equipment the company plans to use will have to be imported from China. “Now we’re forced to look at significantly more expensive options in other countries, because we don’t have sourcing options here in this country, and it’s going to take quite a few years to build that supply chain,” Huang said.
At present, TS is “holding up the major purchasing decisions,” he added, even though the company has commitments both to buyers and suppliers. “We just cannot afford to go forward with that type of tariff,” he said.
Huang is also hoping to get a little more certainty around the final form of Trump’s so-called Liberation Day tariffs that the administration imposed on nearly every other country in the world in early April; they are currently on pause until at least July.
Another key challenge for the new South Carolina factory in particular, Huang said, is that TS Conductor had planned to make it the company’s “export hub,” selling the extra capacity manufactured there abroad. But the retaliatory tariffs facing the U.S. is likely to dampen demand for American-made transmission tech, by making TS Conductor’s products are more expensive compared to alternatives, including those manufactured in China, he added
Huang said he was initially planning to start production out of the South Carolina facility in October. Despite the massive disruptions from tariffs and federal funding uncertainty, the company is “still committed” to getting production lines rolling this fall — though now they’re targeting late December.
“It’s an aggressive schedule,” he acknowledged, “and it also depends on the major equipment [purchasing] decisions that we need to make very soon.”
