Power Outage in Taiwan
Taiwan’s State-run power company reported that an ‘incident’ at a major power plant caused a blackout that affected ~5m of the country’s ~24m residents. Problems at a power plant in Kaohsiung triggered the blackout but an investigation is underway with company executives ‘not ruling anything out’ until completed. The timing of the blackout, a day after the US Air Force made a public demonstration of its military air power at an airbase in Japan as the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused increased fears of a similar move by China toward Taiwan, who China considers to be a part of the People’s Republic of China and not a sovereign country.
Much of the power grid was restored within an hour as alternative sources were brought on line and the downtime at display and semiconductor manufacturing fabs was covered by back-up power common at such facilities, however even millisecond transition times to backup power can cause steps to be missed during a number of processes, which takes a bit of time to evaluate. With Taiwan Semi (TSM) the globe’s leading producer, having production capacity in affected regions, the company will need to evaluate production before it can accurately estimate any potential losses. Taiwan is known to have occasional blackouts, but those are typically during the summer months when the heat causes demand spikes across a grid that was designed to meet ‘average’ power consumption.
Much of the power grid was restored within an hour as alternative sources were brought on line and the downtime at display and semiconductor manufacturing fabs was covered by back-up power common at such facilities, however even millisecond transition times to backup power can cause steps to be missed during a number of processes, which takes a bit of time to evaluate. With Taiwan Semi (TSM) the globe’s leading producer, having production capacity in affected regions, the company will need to evaluate production before it can accurately estimate any potential losses. Taiwan is known to have occasional blackouts, but those are typically during the summer months when the heat causes demand spikes across a grid that was designed to meet ‘average’ power consumption.
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