Transforming Energy for America

Message From Prabhat K. Jain

CEO/CTO

Over the past five decades, Virginia Transformer Corp. has become the largest U.S.-owned manufacturer of power transformers in North America. The company was established in 1971, in Roanoke, VA, and started by manufacturing specialty transformers for the mining and steel industries, which required a high level of engineering expertise. The business has grown on this foundation of strong engineering talent. Current management took over leadership of the business in 1982, and the product range and markets served has expanded rapidly ever since to cover all of North America and countries around the globe.

Increasing to 15 MVA, 115 kV oil-insulated transformers and 10 MVA, 35 kV dry-type transformers at the Roanoke plant in 1989 allowed the company to serve heavy industry and utility power applications. Currently, the company has five plants in North America offering ratings from 300 kVA up to 400 MVA/525 kV class for core-type liquid-filled transformers, from 60 MVA up to 1,400 MVA/500 kV for shell-type liquid-filled transformers, and 300 kVA up to 20 MVA/35 kV for dry-type transformers. Virginia Transformer offers solutions for transformer design across a broad spectrum of utility, industrial, renewable energy, and commercial applications. This gives us the widest product range and the broadest application experience in all markets.

Today, with more than 400 engineers, VTC is the leading designer and manufacturer of power transformers in North America. In our continued commitment to excellence, we are applying our engineering skills to build transformers that will last for 60 years to improve the reliability and resiliency of the U.S. electrical grid. With our well-equipped plants and overlap of range between them, VTC is the most reliable transformer manufacturer in the industry.

Our rapid growth in the last 50+ years comes from technical strength and a focus on quality and customer service in all areas of our business. To ensure quality and on-time shipping, you need people; that is why our company has thousands of employees – more than 400 of those are engineers, with graduate, post-graduate, and PhD degrees in all disciplines of business. Continuous improvement in design and manufacturing processes has reduced our defect rate to less than one percent of transformers shipped, with efforts underway to reduce that even further. Our engineering staff has more than 300 years of combined transformer-design experience, and there are more than 20,000 designs on file in our archives, providing an extensive resource for selecting the optimum solution for any power transformer application. Our customers tell us that our technology, software, processes, people, and performance are the best in the industry.

The Future

As the largest U.S.-owned transformer manufacturer in North America, we have many goals for the future. We will continue to train our workforce at all locations and further reduce our lead times. We will pursue growth for all employees as we expand in new markets to boost our economy and create more jobs for American workers. We will do all of this with a specific focus on improving the customer experience and our overall customer service.

We are taking decisive actions to achieve these goals. We have invested in upgrades to all manufacturing facilities for safety, developed and implemented ongoing training programs for employees, and substantially increased our presence in the renewable power generation, heavy industry, electric utilities, and data center markets.

The drive and commitment to excellence of everyone in our company is unmatched anywhere else – which explains why our business has grown faster in the past than any other power transformer manufacturer in North America. We make countless innovations and improvements in every aspect of our operations, and we will continue to do so. Our commitment to excellence is our culture.

U.S. power demand continues to grow, and we will grow with it. Together, we are the best in the industry, and we take great pride in the work we do each day to ensure the electrical grid is reliable and resilient, in addition to our work to help enable U.S. manufacturing.

To hear more from Prabhat Jain on our commitment to excellence, listen to this discussion with Transformer Technology Magazine or read this article on Building Transformers; Building Quality.


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