90-minute Power Outage in Taiwan Threatens Chip Manufacturing

Controller Master


A major power-outage affected regions of Taiwan with semiconductor manufacturing bases, earlier this morning (March 3, 2022). A malfunction with a power-station caused a sudden drop in power-generation, triggering power-grid failures, and resulting in blackouts lasting around 90 minutes. This may not seem like much, but for a semiconductor manufacturing facility with limited power back-up and time-critical and power-critical processes, 90 minutes is an eternity.

Taiwan News reports that a Taipower plant in Kaohsiung suffered a malfunction with steam leaks in the turbine room, triggering an emergency shutdown. This caused a 10.5 MW drop in supply. Such sudden supply-demand changes can cause AC frequency to fall out of the safe range, and transmission equipment in switch-yards are designed to automatically trip (to protect end-user equipment). A cascading power outage was seen in Wenshan District, Neihu District, Da’an District, and Xinyi District. In New Taipei City, Yonghe District, Banqiao District, and New Taipei Industrial Park. Various semiconductor-manufacturing companies are yet to report how this power-loss affected them.

Update 07:02 UTC: In the wake of this power-outage, major semiconductor companies put out their initial assessments of how this affected them.

  • TSMC said it faced no outage, there was a manageable effect on the UMC plant in Nanke. Some TSMC plants experienced a voltage drop lasting 400 to 1000 ms, and the company is assessing how this impacts them. Factory equipment at UMC Nanke plant is affected, but restarted. TSMC stressed that the impact on its production should be negligible
  • Display panel maker Innolux faced a voltage drop or shutdown, and the company is assessing its impact. The company was running on back-up generators.
  • Yageo Kaohsiung, which makes passive components said that it faced an outage, which was supported by back-up power. Its production line isn’t as sensitive to outages as silicon fabrication
  • DRAM makers Nanya and Winbond report no impact
  • PCB manufacturers Taihong, HannStar etc., located in the Kaohsiung area, report plant shutdowns due to the outage, and “slight” wastages. The company is sitting on enough inventory to cover the shortfall
  • Zhengwei Tucheng with makes power connectors, lost power for 1.5 hours, but the production line wasn’t affected. Connectors are low-tech items.
  • Nanzi Science and Technology Park, an SEZ housing many companies reported a power outages.