Owners Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Cleanhill Partners have agreed to sell US power electronics manufacturer EPC Power Corp to manufacturing group Flex.
The parties announced yesterday (3 September) that a definitive agreement has been reached in a deal worth US$4.4 billion. The transaction is expected to close in Q4 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. Buyer Flex is evaluating various financing alternatives and expects to fund the acquisition with a combination of debt and equity.
EPC Power is a California-headquartered manufacturer of software-defined inverters, power conversion systems (PCS), microgrid and data centre power solutions, including solid-state transformers. EPC Power was acquired by Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Cleanhill Partners in 2022.
At the time of the acquisition, other power electronics firms serving the renewable energy and energy storage industries were also changing hands. Spain’s Eks Energy was bought by Powin in 2022 and is now fully owned by Hitachi Energy after the former’s bankruptcy and Dynapower was acquired in the summer of 2022 by industrial sensor manufacturer Sensata for US$580 million.
Try Premium for just $1
- Full premium access for the first month at only $1
- Converts to an annual rate after 30 days unless cancelled
- Cancel anytime during the trial period
Premium Benefits
- Expert industry analysis and interviews
- Digital access to PV Tech Power journal
- Exclusive event discounts
Or get the full Premium subscription right away
Or continue reading this article for free
Since then, while energy sector demand for solar PV inverters and battery energy storage system (BESS) PCS has grown, data centres have rapidly emerged as a demand driver for power electronics in the industrial sector.
Flex is a global contract manufacturer of products and solutions across multiple industries, including automotive, cloud computing, communications, data centres, healthcare, industrial and more. Headquartered in Singapore with its US HQ in Texas, Flex was formerly the owner of US solar PV tracker company Nextracker, which it acquired in 2015. Nextracker left Flex’s ownership and became an independent company in 2024, and has since rebranded as Nextpower, a provider of integrated utility-scale solar infrastructure.
The prospective new owner said EPC Power’s power conversion capabilities will combine with Flex’s existing portfolio of power, cooling and compute solutions. EPC Power will become part of Flex’s Cloud and Power Infrastructure (CPI) business segment, which the parent company intends to spin out as a separate publicly traded company in Q1 2027.
Flex specifically highlighted the potential of EPC Power’s hardware, software, and controls platform for next-generation 800V data centre power architectures, including the power electronics company’s rectifiers, DC-DC converters, and planned development of solid-state transformers (SSTs).
EPC Power said its technology is designed to give data centre developers speed-to-power and to address the volatility of AI computing loads, which can cause megawatt swings in power demand in a fraction of a second.
According to Flex, EPC Power is expected to generate around US$800 million in revenues in 2026, growing by ~40% in 2027. It also expects an EBITDA margin of roughly 30% next year.
“We first invested in EPC Power in 2021 because we believed power conversion would become a critical enabling technology as renewable generation, grid modernisation, and digital infrastructure converged,” Cleanhill Partners managing partners Ash Upadhyaya and Rakesh Wilson said.
“That conviction came well before the extraordinary growth in power demand driven by AI.”
US power electronics manufacturing drivers
Around the time Goldman Sach Alternatives and Cleanhill Partners acquired EPC Power, Energy-Storage.news heard from various industry sources that while the PCS represents a small percentage of project Capex, its function at the heart of the BESS equipment means that any fault can be a major drain on Opex, result in lost revenues and impact the reputation of the BESS integrator more than the PCS provider.
EPC Power’s ‘Made in America’ status will likely be seen as a competitive advantage by its new owner. Last month, Energy-Storage.news reported on the opening of the company’s third manufacturing facility in the US, adding 27GW of annual nameplate production capacity at a site in South Carolina that can be ramped to 40GW annual output.
Around the same time, Heron Power, a power electronics startup led by former Tesla executive Drew Baglino, said it has selected a site in California for its first factory. Heron Power’s planned facility also targets a 40GW annual production capacity of Heron Link, an integrated PCS for large-scale energy and data centre projects.
The medium-voltage Heron Link is a 5MW PCS that integrates bidirectional inverters with solid-state transformers. Heron Power aims for commercial production to begin at the former distribution warehouse site in late 2027.
CEO and founder Baglino said the US grid had to “grow faster than it has in decades,” with new demand from AI and electric vehicles (EVs), and new supply from solar PV and wind energy.
The geopolitical landscape also gives impetus for increasing domestic supply. The US has just seen its president issue an executive order banning imports of inverters, transformers, BESS and other bulk power equipment from 24 countries, including China, citing an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security.
President Donald Trump’s executive order came a few weeks after the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB) of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) classified foreign-produced power inverters and “advanced robotic devices” as national security threats.
