Siemens Energy’s manufacturing facility at 101 Siemens Ave. in Charlotte

Siemens Energy has announced $421M expansion plans across its North Carolina operations in both Charlotte and Raleigh, the Charlotte Business Journal reported.

A significant portion of the expansion will be investment at the company’s existing gas turbine manufacturing and service facility in Charlotte, which sits at more than 1M SF at 101 Siemens Ave. off Westinghouse Boulevard. 

In Raleigh, Siemens Energy is also reportedly expanding grid technology project execution.

This move is meant to increase investments at sites that manufacture critical pieces of energy infrastructure equipment, The Charlotte Observer reports.

The investment will create 500 jobs in North Carolina across multiple locations that manufacture energy infrastructure equipment, the company estimates.

Siemens’ expansion in the state is part of a finalized plan to invest $1B in manufacturing in the U.S. The company listed plans for new and expanded manufacturing in Mississippi, Alabama, New York, Texas and Florida. 

The investment was first announced during the company’s Capital Markets Day event in November 2025. During the presentation, company officials highlighted how their backlog for new fossil fuel and power grid energy infrastructure projects had grown since 2022.

Power demand in the U.S. is expected to rise by an average of 1.7% in 2026, and has been rising recently after years of flat demand growth, The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates. This demand has been driven by data center power consumption. 

Gas turbine manufacturing began in Charlotte in 2011, but Siemens halted production in 2018 due to low demand a few years back and altered the space to service gas turbines already installed across the U.S. instead. The Munich-based company will now restart production. 

Siemens reportedly expects its first turbines made in Charlotte to start shipping in the next two to three years. This planned expansion comes two years after the announcement of an earlier additional round of $150M in investment in Charlotte by the company.

North Carolina has become a hub for industrial projects. According to Colliers, Charlotte alone added 5.6M SF of new industrial supply and had more than 6M SF of positive absorption last year. In Q4 2025, the city saw 2.23M SF absorbed and 1.8M SF delivered.

Raleigh-Durham’s industrial market, meanwhile, ended 2025 with steady momentum, with Colliers reporting nearly 777K SF of net absorption in Q4, totaling 2.66M SF of positive absorption for the year.

The market reportedly entered this year with 6.7M SF of industrial and flex product under construction, marking “one of the most active development pipelines of the past decade,” Colliers reported.

MRP Realty, Asana Partners and the Rockefeller Group announced the first joint venture between their firms and the final close of funding for the Brooklyn & Church redevelopment. The partnership closed with lenders on construction financing for the conversion of the former Duke Energy headquarters located at 526 S. Church Street in Charlotte. When completed, the project will consist of 460 apartments and 57,000 square feet of retail.

The first conversion of office to mixed-use in Charlotte, the 800,000-square-foot building will repurpose the 1970s office tower into loft-style apartments with ground-floor retail and a new three-story, 30,000-square-foot retail building at the corner of Church Street and Brooklyn Village Avenue. 

Brooklyn & Church will rise thirteen stories and provide modern industrial loft-style living and balconies. The building’s core and shell will be preserved, and the façade will be completely reskinned, providing new glass windows and spacious balconies.

Oglethorpe Power will break ground on a new combined-cycle plant in Forsyth in Monroe County, Georgia. This two-unit, approximately 1,200-megawatt facility will be built on land the company owns, adjacent to the Smarr Energy Facility, an existing natural gas-fired simple-cycle combustion turbine plant that they operate. The development of this new facility will represent a capital investment of approximately $2 billion in Monroe County.

In Talbot County, Oglethorpe will begin construction on a new combustion turbine unit at its existing plant in Box Springs, Georgia. This new, approximately 240-megawatt unit, which will be the seventh unit at the Talbot Energy Facility, is expected to be the most efficient natural gas peaking plant in its fleet. The unit will also feature dual-fuel capability, enhancing year-round resiliency. The development of this new unit will represent a capital investment of approximately $360 million in Talbot County.

Oglethorpe provides power for Georgia’s 38 electric cooperatives.

The former Duke Energy building in downtown Charlotte is going down. It needs to be demolished so Asana Partners and MRP Realty can move forward on their $250 million redevelopment plan. The Charlotte Business Journal reports the building at 526 S. Church St. won’t be demolished until the fall, and construction should start soon after. Full delivery is slated for the fourth quarter of 2026. The project team includes SK&I Architecture, LandDesign, Morris Adjmi Architects and Balfour Beatty.

The plan includes converting the 1970s-era office tower into 448 luxury apartments with 25,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and demolishing the front lobby and atrium. That would reduce the total square footage by about 230,000 and make way for a three-story, 30,000-square-foot retail building.

Asana Partners and MRP paid $35 million for the site in December 2022.

Duke Energy Plaza is moving into a new 40-story tower at 525 S. Tryon St.

Solar component maker Sunmax Tech is building a 300,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Adairsville, about an hour NW of Atlanta. The facility is set to commence Phase I operations in May 2024.

Sunmax Tech plans to execute a comprehensive investment strategy over the next five to eight years, encompassing three distinct phases. In Phase I, the company will invest $39 million to establish a manufacturing facility and procure equipment for solar photovoltaic junction boxes and solar cables, creating 82 new job positions. The company is a supplier for Hanwha and Tesla.

The subsequent phases will witness additional investments of $76 million and $78 million in Phase II and Phase III, respectively. These phases will focus on expanding production capabilities to include EVA film, cable line plastic material, aluminum solar frames, and copper wire, creating a total of 242 new job positions.

By 2027, the company anticipates achieving annual sales of $100 million and capturing over 40% market share in photovoltaic junction boxes and connectors across North America.

Dominion Energy NC has purchased the land needed to get going on a liquified natural gas storage facility in Person County. They paid $12 million for the land needed for the 500-acre plant. The Triangle Business Journal reports 70 acres will be for the actual gas storage tank and equipment and the rest will be a buffer around the facility. The company will break ground on the liquified natural gas storage facility sometime in the first quarter of this year.

The facility will have one storage tank totaling 25 million gallons, with future expansion capabilities to build a second storage tank of the same size. The facility will receive and send natural gas via an existing Dominion gas pipeline on the proposed site.

Connect Industrial Midwest 2024 will take place on March 5, 2024, at Joe’s Live in Rosemont, Illinois. Click here for more information and to register.