Næxon

The U.S. industrial picture entering the final stretch of September is being shaped by refinery reliability and turnaround activity, an extraordinary buildout of data centers and the electrical infrastructure needed to support them, and continued investment in domestic manufacturing and power generation.

Joliet Refinery Works Through Recovery After Plant-Wide Shutdown

ExxonMobil’s 264,000-barrel-per-day Joliet refinery in Illinois experienced a plant-wide shutdown after a power outage on September 13. Electricity was restored several hours later, but the outage activated refinery safety systems and required units to be stabilized and assessed before normal operations could resume. The refinery is an important gasoline and diesel supplier for the Midwest. 

The event is particularly significant because U.S. refiners have been operating extremely hard while global fuel supplies remain tight. With the traditional fall maintenance season beginning, reliability problems occurring alongside scheduled outages could place additional pressure on refinery capacity.

Fall Refinery Turnaround Season Is Building

Planned maintenance is already underway at the Cenovus Lima Refinery in Ohio. The facility announced a September turnaround involving units being taken offline for maintenance, with work expected to continue into approximately mid-October. Residents were advised that increased traffic, flaring, noise and odors could accompany the work. 

Across the Gulf Coast, the maintenance picture is also worth watching closely. Refiners spent much of 2026 running facilities at unusually high utilization rates, and some maintenance work was deferred while plants maximized production. That creates the possibility of substantial inspection, exchanger, catalyst, piping, mechanical and reliability work as facilities move deeper into the fall maintenance cycle. 

For pipefitters, welders, boilermakers, millwrights, electricians, instrumentation technicians, scaffold builders, riggers and other turnaround crafts, refinery maintenance remains one of the most important areas to watch through the remainder of 2026.

$1.2 Billion in Additional Texas Data Centers Planned

Central Texas continues to attract enormous data-center investment. Two additional facilities have been filed for Cedar Creek in Bastrop County, southeast of Austin, representing approximately $1.2 billion combined investment.

Each proposed facility is approximately 591,400 square feet. Current filings indicate construction could begin in November 2026 and continue into 2028, although construction schedules can change. The projects would add to an already substantial data-center development footprint in the area. 

Projects of this scale can create major demand beyond the buildings themselves, including electrical distribution, substations, backup generation, cooling systems, mechanical piping, structural steel, controls, fire protection and commissioning.

U.S. Data-Center Construction Pipeline Remains Massive

The broader numbers show just how large this market has become.

Data-center construction starts totaled approximately $84.1 billion through July 2026, nearly three times the spending recorded during the comparable period a year earlier. ConstructConnect was also tracking 85 projects valued at approximately $78.7 billion with potential start dates before the end of 2026, although projects still in preconstruction are not guaranteed to proceed on schedule. 

Texas, Virginia, Georgia and Arkansas remain major Southern markets, while Ohio, Indiana and other Midwestern states continue attracting large projects. Power availability has increasingly become one of the major constraints determining where these campuses can actually be constructed. 

For the skilled trades, this is increasingly becoming an electrical-and-mechanical infrastructure story rather than simply a technology story.

Electrical Infrastructure Contractors Are Expanding With the Boom

The demand for power infrastructure is also producing contractor expansion.

High-voltage engineering contractor H&MV Engineering has established its North American headquarters in Dallas and announced plans to create approximately 1,000 jobs over five years. Its work includes substations and other high-voltage infrastructure serving markets such as data centers, AI infrastructure, renewable energy and battery storage. 

This is another signal that the data-center construction wave is creating a second layer of industrial activity around substations, transmission, transformers, switchgear and electrical infrastructure.

$528 Million Transformer Factory Expands U.S. Grid Manufacturing

Hitachi Energy announced a $528 million investment in a new large-power-transformer manufacturing facility in Mississippi. The company describes it as its largest single U.S. investment to date and part of approximately $1.5 billion in American manufacturing expansion commitments. 

Transformer manufacturing capacity has become increasingly important as utilities, industrial facilities and data-center developers compete for equipment needed to expand the electrical grid.

For industrial workers, investments like this extend the construction boom beyond individual data-center campuses into the factories and supply chains producing the equipment those projects require.

Southwestern Pennsylvania Could See Major Natural-Gas Power Development

Developers are proposing a group of natural-gas power plants across southwestern Pennsylvania as electricity demand rises. Ten proposed projects examined in the Pittsburgh region could represent a substantial addition to Pennsylvania’s generating capacity if ultimately constructed. 

Not every proposed power project reaches construction, but the number of projects being considered illustrates a larger trend: rapidly increasing electricity demand is beginning to generate another potential construction cycle involving generation plants, gas infrastructure, transmission, substations and associated industrial systems.

Power Is Becoming the Critical Constraint Behind Industrial Growth

The connection between data centers and the power industry is becoming increasingly difficult to separate.

AI campuses require enormous amounts of continuous electricity. That demand is driving investment in substations, transmission systems, transformers, natural-gas generation, backup power, cooling infrastructure and potentially nuclear generation.

Data-center construction is therefore creating opportunities well outside the data-center fence. The workers building the electrical grid, power plants, equipment factories and supporting infrastructure are increasingly part of the same construction cycle.

What This Means for the Trades

The strongest signal in this recap is the convergence of several industrial markets.

Refineries are entering maintenance season after operating at high utilization. Data-center construction remains exceptionally active. Electrical contractors are expanding. Transformer manufacturing is receiving major investment. New generating capacity is being proposed to satisfy enormous electricity requirements.

That combination creates potential work across pipefitting, welding, electrical, instrumentation and controls, millwright work, ironwork, rigging, scaffolding, equipment setting, fabrication, commissioning and supervision.

The projects may look different—a refinery turnaround in Ohio, a hyperscale campus in Texas, a transformer factory in Mississippi or a power plant in Pennsylvania—but increasingly they are competing for many of the same skilled craftspeople.

Næxon will continue tracking the projects, shutdowns, contractor activity and hiring signals behind America’s industrial buildout.