Outage at Taipower’s Hsinta Power Plant Found to Have No Impact on Memory Fabs and Foundries, Says TrendForce

The Hsinta Power Plant in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City was shut down unexpectedly at 2:37 p.m. on May 13 (today local time) due to malfunction. The effect of this incident has been felt across the entire island. TrendForce has undertaken a swift survey on the damages and operation status of each supplier, and the results indicate that most DRAM and NAND Flash suppliers are provisioning power to their fabs normally; although some fabs experienced a reduction in voltage, this did not impact production. Regarding foundry, the Southern Taiwan Science Park located in Tainan sustained a relatively higher impact, with power outages occurring in some fabs, though the uninterruptible power supplies came into operation and ensured the power outage had only limited impact, according to preliminary investigations.

With regards to DRAM production capacity, Taiwan accounts for about 21% of the global total. On the other hand, with regards to NAND Flash capacity, Taiwan hosts production capacities from Macronix, PSMC, Winbond, with these capacities collectively accounting for about 1% of the global total. Finally, with regards to foundry capacity in Taiwan, combined 12-inch capacities from TSMC, UMC, Vanguard, and PSMC account for about 56% of the global total, while their 8-inch capacities account for about 40% of the global total.

As the power outage occurred due to an unknown malfunction within the power plant, government-run utility Taipower has implemented rolling blackout in order to compensate for insufficient generation capacity. Regarding the impact of this incident on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, supplying power to local wafer fabs is going to be the top priority for Taipower because even the shortest power disruption can have a devastating effect on the operation of chip production lines and lead to considerable losses. Currently, Taipower has no plan to extend rolling blackout to areas where wafer fabs (including DRAM, NAND Flash, and foundry plants) are located.

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