The Illinois business rents and calibrates the instruments used to test high-voltage equipment.
A-Rent provides electrical test equipment used to commission, maintain and repair medium- and high-voltage electrical systems. Its rental fleet includes relay and circuit breaker test sets, primary injection systems, hipot testers, transformer test equipment, power quality meters, infrared cameras and load banks.
September 15, 2026|John McNulty
Bregal Sagemount has acquired A-Rent Test Equipment, a company that rents the instruments used to test high-voltage electrical equipment and runs the laboratories that keep them calibrated. A-Rent is a portfolio company of Sterling Partners and Rising Point Capital.
A-Rent provides electrical test equipment used to commission, maintain and repair medium- and high-voltage electrical systems. Its rental fleet includes relay and circuit breaker test sets, primary injection systems, hipot testers, transformer test equipment, power quality meters, infrared cameras and load banks. The company carries equipment from Doble, Omicron, Megger, Fluke and Avtron.
A-Rent has more than 1,000 active customers across electric utilities, data centers, industrial and manufacturing facilities, oil and gas operations and renewable energy projects.
Renting is common in the electrical testing market because much of the equipment is expensive and used only during commissioning projects, scheduled outages or maintenance work. Renting converts that equipment purchase into a project expense and allows contractors to match their equipment needs with changing workloads.
Calibration is another part of the company’s service offerings. Test equipment must be periodically checked against known standards to confirm its accuracy, and A-Rent provides a calibration certificate with each rental. The company also provides calibration services in its laboratory, at customer locations and remotely using reference equipment shipped to the customer.
A-Rent operates four distribution and calibration facilities in Illinois, Texas, Arizona and Virginia, with a fifth in Hillsboro, Oregon scheduled to open in late 2026. The company is headquartered near Chicago in Burr Ridge, Illinois. A-Rent was founded in 2019 by Paul Seppanen who had been an executive in residence at Sterling Partners working on investments in the electrical grid field services sector. Mr. Seppanen will continue to lead the company as CEO in partnership with Bregal Sagemount.
Paul Seppanen
“Our customers rely on us to provide calibrated, project-ready equipment when and where they need it,” said Mr. Seppanen. “Sagemount understands the standards our customers expect and shares our ambition for A-Rent’s next chapter. With its support, we can serve more customers and broaden our capabilities while maintaining the responsiveness and technical expertise that define A-Rent.”
Electrical testing is required maintenance work. NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) reliability standards require utilities to maintain and test protection systems on prescribed schedules, while ANSI/NETA (American National Standards Institute / International Electrical Testing Association) standards establish the procedures used in the field. That creates a recurring base of demand that is tied more closely to maintenance cycles than to the broader economy.
The market also benefits from continued investment in the electrical grid and data centers. The Edison Electric Institute projects $1.4 trillion of investor-owned utility capital spending through 2030, including $239 billion in 2026. Wood Mackenzie expects the US data center electrical equipment market to increase from $20 billion in 2025 to $65 billion by 2030. New transformers, switchgear and protection systems must be tested before entering service. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reported more than 2,000 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity in US interconnection queues at the end of 2025. That backlog fell about 10 percent over the year and is down from a peak near 2,600 gigawatts at the end of 2023, but it still represents a substantial pipeline of commissioning and testing work.
William Breskman
“Growing power demand from data centers, grid modernization and electrification is increasing the need for testing across both new and existing infrastructure,” said Will Breskman, a partner at Sagemount. “A-Rent’s scale and national reach position the company well to serve that demand.”
A-Rent is not the first electrical test equipment rental company to attract private equity. In February 2025, Sandbrook Capital, an investor in energy transition and infrastructure, agreed to acquire Intellirent from Electro Rent. Electro Rent had owned the business since 2018 and described it as a non-core operation.
Other participants in the market include a mix of sponsor-backed, family-owned and public companies. Electro Rent, founded in California in 1965, has been owned by Platinum Equity since its $382 million take-private in 2016. Protec Equipment Resources, a Texas-based provider of electrical test equipment rentals, operates eight locations. Advanced Test Equipment, founded in California in 1981, remains family owned and operates nine A2LA-accredited laboratories. Transcat, founded in New York in 1964, is publicly traded and operates more than 25 calibration laboratories in the United States, Canada and Ireland.
Bregal Sagemount invests from $20 million to $400 million per equity transaction and from $15 million to $100 million per credit transaction, in companies with revenues above $7 million, taking either majority or minority positions and investing in equity or debt. Sectors of interest include software, information and data services, financial technology and financial services, digital infrastructure, healthcare information technology, and business and consumer services.
The investment in A-Rent is being made through Sagemount’s fifth fund, which closed at its $3.5 billion hard cap in March 2026. The oversubscribed fund was raised in just over four months and is approximately 30% larger than its $2.65 billion predecessor. Bregal Sagemount was founded in 2012 and has offices in New York and Palo Alto.
“Paul and the team have scaled A-Rent rapidly while maintaining the availability and service levels its customers value,” said Gene Yoon, the founder and managing partner of Sagemount. “We look forward to partnering with them to support A-Rent’s expansion across new markets and product categories and build on the strong platform they have created.”
Sterling Partners focuses on investing growth capital in small and mid-market companies in industries with positive, long-term trends, including healthcare and business services. The firm was founded in 1983 and has offices in Chicago and Baltimore.
Rising Point Capital invests in founder-owned, family-owned, or management-owned companies with revenues of at least $10 million and EBITDA of at least $2 million. Sectors of interest include industrial services, energy and infrastructure, environmental and waste, logistics and transportation, home services, value-added distribution and commercial services. The firm was co-founded in 2019 by partners Michael Drai and Justin Marku and is headquartered in Chicago.
