HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has signed a contract worth $673.8 million to supply 1,000 megawatts of power generation systems to U.S. data centers, the company announced on August 9, 2026. The buyer is Corban Energy Group, a U.S. energy infrastructure developer, and the equipment will feed data centers operated by what HD Hyundai describes as a major U.S. technology company.
The systems are built around the company’s 9.6-megawatt HiMSEN engine, a medium-speed engine it positions for continuous, around-the-clock generation. According to the company’s announcement, the order is the largest power-generation engine contract in HD Hyundai Heavy Industries’ history, and it arrives roughly four months after the company’s first move into the U.S. data center market.
The deal is a data point in a shift now defining AI infrastructure: as grid interconnection queues stretch into years, large data center operators are increasingly contracting for their own on-site generation rather than waiting for a utility to deliver power. A 1,000 MW order of medium-speed engines is not backup generation sized to ride out an outage. It is prime power, built to run a campus continuously.
A second U.S. deal, four months after the first
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries entered the U.S. data center market in April 2026 with a contract to supply engine-based power generation systems to energy developer Aperion Energy Group. The company’s engine division said that order covered 33 natural-gas-fired engines totaling roughly 684 MW, a deal HD Hyundai valued at USD 425 million.
The Corban contract is larger on every axis: 1,000 MW against 684, and $673.8 million against $425 million. The engines differ too. Where the April systems used a 20-MW-class engine, the Corban order uses the 9.6-MW HiMSEN unit, implying on the order of a hundred engines across the sites the systems will serve. HD Hyundai said the two companies intend to expand cooperation into follow-on projects.
Corban Energy Group, based in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, builds LNG storage and cryogenic equipment and supplies gas, LNG, and power products to infrastructure projects including data centers. The pairing matters to how these campuses get built: a fuel-and-power developer contracts for the generation equipment, then delivers power to the technology company operating the data centers.
Why engines, and why now
EPRI projects data centers rising from 4-5% to 9-17% of U.S. electricity demand by 2030, a load growth grid connections have been slow to serve. HD Hyundai pointed to the Electric Power Research Institute’s projection that data centers’ share of total U.S. electricity consumption will more than triple by 2030. EPRI’s Powering Intelligence 2026 analysis puts data centers at roughly 4 to 5 percent of U.S. electricity demand today, rising to between 9 and 17 percent by 2030 depending on the growth scenario.
Against that demand curve, medium-speed engines occupy a specific niche. They start fast, follow load, and run continuously, which suits facilities that cannot tolerate interruption and cannot wait for a grid connection. They are also modular, so capacity can be added in roughly 10-MW increments rather than in the large blocks a combined-cycle gas plant delivers. The trade-off is fuel: these are natural-gas engines, so a campus powered this way ties its operating cost and its emissions profile to gas supply. HD Hyundai’s engine division has framed the HiMSEN line around fast start-up, stable load response, and operational reliability for mission-critical loads.
The order also extends a group-level push. HD Hyundai said its shipbuilding holding company is developing floating data center technology while affiliates expand into power distribution equipment and engine maintenance services, positioning the wider group across the data center power chain rather than in engine supply alone.
HD Hyundai said the two companies plan to expand cooperation into follow-on projects. When a technology company needs a gigawatt of capacity and the grid cannot commit to a delivery date, buying a hundred engines and generating on-site stops being an edge case and becomes a procurement strategy. HD Hyundai’s back-to-back orders, each its largest at the time, suggest that strategy is scaling.
