Photo credit: Heron Power / Shutterstock
The power conversion tech company Heron Power is putting steel in the ground for its first commercial factory, just miles from its Silicon Valley engineering hub.
The startup, which in February closed a $140 million Series B to fund the build-out, aims to start production in the second half of 2027 and eventually ramp up to 40 gigawatts of capacity, or about 10,000 of its “Heron Link” systems.
The technology is a departure from the decades-old and largely mechanical transformers that hold together today’s grid. Heron Power promises to combine multiple pieces of power conversion equipment into a single modular, software-controlled unit for both data centers and solar and battery storage projects looking to get interconnected. The goal is to get those projects online faster amid a years-long global shortage of transformers, while also making the grid more resilient to large voltage changes.
But it isn’t yet quite ready for scale. Founder and CEO Drew Baglino, a former executive at Tesla, told Latitude Media that Heron Power is still developing its manufacturing process ahead of the factory opening. That includes working with equipment integrators and testing different ways to make key components and do final assembly — which is a big reason why Heron Power last week announced Morgan Hill, California as the site of the first commercial-scale operation.
