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More like a case for on site power generation. Semiconductor fabs consume enormous amounts of power. Would be difficult to handle with energy storage systems, a

More like a case for on site power generation. Semiconductor fabs consume enormous amounts of power. Would be difficult to handle with energy storage systems, as least with today's technology.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
I was insinuating Tesla Powerpacks, similar to the Hornsdale Power Reserve. EDIT: After doing more digging and seeing how much power the facility requires, energy storage is definitely not an option. They'd need their own natural gas turbine on site and redundant transformers (a transformer failed).
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  Right, but even those might not be sufficiently energy dense because industrial processes use so much power.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    Diesel generators could easily handle their load requirements.
greglindahl 9y ago
There's a row of new(ish) datacenters in Santa Clara (Silicon Valley) where there used to be a row of fabs -- because a large amount of power infrastructure was already available after the fabs were torn town. All of these datacenters use energy storage to tide themselves over power failures. Why is it that energe storage works for datacenters but not for fabs?
- mattnewton 9y ago
  My guess would be fabs take a lot more energy at peak draw- they have to melt the components in a chip, and data centers are trying not to melt them.
  - AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
    Sure, but, do they need to keep producing at peak when there is a power outage? You must have a plan to ramp down to a steady state of consumption that keeps things safe. Even if they need many megawatts, the 50 million in damages figure quoted elsewhere buys a hell of a lot of generators.
    - cheeseprocedure 9y ago
      My layperson's understanding of the furnaces producing silicon ingots is that they can't power down in-process; best case, they take weeks to bring back into service, while the worst case is serious damage to the equipment as the silicon inside recrystallizes. I wonder if it's even possible to ramp down this single process without a similar hit to productivity as an uncontrolled power loss, never mind the other stages in the fab process. If not, fabs can consume tens of megawatts, so what does it cost to build and maintain the necessary backup generation capacity to weather a 30-minute outage? One interesting example: USD $1.5 million for 10MW of flywheel-based backup capacity (http://ir.p10industries.com/news-releases/news-release-details/active-powers-cleansource-protect-state-art-wafer-fab-51 http://ir.p10industries.com/news-releases/news-release-detai...) - but these will last ~15 seconds under full load.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        > so what does it cost to build and maintain the necessary backup generation capacity to weather a 30-minute outage? Tesla's install at the Hornsdale Power Reserve [1] is 129 MW of storage capable of discharging at 100MW. This could supply power for far more than 30 minutes if an outage occurs. Estimated cost is $50 million, which appears to be roughly the same cost as this manufacturing failure, so there's a middle ground to be found. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Wind_Farm#Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Wind_Farm#Hornsdale_...
- gtdawg 9y ago
  By energy storage, I assume you mean the energy stored in diesel, and released when combusted and used to turn a generator. If you are referring to batteries, do you have any links? I would be really interested to learn more about large scale datacenters that are using something other than diesel/natural gas for backup power.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Microsoft: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/09/17/microsoft-were-eliminating-backup-generators http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/09/17/micro... I mean, it's sort of silly to locate your data centers where you can't use on site renewable generation, no? If you're going to put a datacenter somewhere due to low land costs, but still meets your user latency requirements (speed of light), if you can generate onsite with solar and meet your consumption needs, and battery back it, and have utility power, you don't need large diesel gensets for battery backup (gensets that are rarely used but depreciating constantly). Apple built a 200MW solar farm to power its Reno, NV datacenter. It also built a 50MW solar power plant on 300 acres in Florence, Ariz., which is used to power its Mesa data center. They use 100% renewables to power all of their data centers. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3161732/sustainable-it/apple-to-build-200mw-solar-farm-to-power-data-center.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3161732/sustainable-it... And in manufacturing, Tesla is covering the entire roof of Gigafactory 1 with solar. It can be done.
    - cheeseprocedure 9y ago
      Is hundreds of acres of solar an option in South Korea?
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        It appears so. https://www.koreaexpose.com/solar-agriculture-s-koreas-new-farming-revolution/ https://www.koreaexpose.com/solar-agriculture-s-koreas-new-f...
  - greglindahl 9y ago

More like a case for on site power generation. Semiconductor fabs consume enormous amounts of power. Would be difficult to handle with energy storage systems, as least with today's technology.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

I was insinuating Tesla Powerpacks, similar to the Hornsdale Power Reserve. EDIT: After doing more digging and seeing how much power the facility requires, energy storage is definitely not an option. They'd need their own natural gas turbine on site and redundant transformers (a transformer failed).

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
Right, but even those might not be sufficiently energy dense because industrial processes use so much power.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  Diesel generators could easily handle their load requirements.

greglindahl 9y ago

There's a row of new(ish) datacenters in Santa Clara (Silicon Valley) where there used to be a row of fabs -- because a large amount of power infrastructure was already available after the fabs were torn town. All of these datacenters use energy storage to tide themselves over power failures. Why is it that energe storage works for datacenters but not for fabs?

mattnewton 9y ago
My guess would be fabs take a lot more energy at peak draw- they have to melt the components in a chip, and data centers are trying not to melt them.
- AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
  Sure, but, do they need to keep producing at peak when there is a power outage? You must have a plan to ramp down to a steady state of consumption that keeps things safe. Even if they need many megawatts, the 50 million in damages figure quoted elsewhere buys a hell of a lot of generators.
  - cheeseprocedure 9y ago
    My layperson's understanding of the furnaces producing silicon ingots is that they can't power down in-process; best case, they take weeks to bring back into service, while the worst case is serious damage to the equipment as the silicon inside recrystallizes. I wonder if it's even possible to ramp down this single process without a similar hit to productivity as an uncontrolled power loss, never mind the other stages in the fab process. If not, fabs can consume tens of megawatts, so what does it cost to build and maintain the necessary backup generation capacity to weather a 30-minute outage? One interesting example: USD $1.5 million for 10MW of flywheel-based backup capacity (http://ir.p10industries.com/news-releases/news-release-details/active-powers-cleansource-protect-state-art-wafer-fab-51 http://ir.p10industries.com/news-releases/news-release-detai...) - but these will last ~15 seconds under full load.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      > so what does it cost to build and maintain the necessary backup generation capacity to weather a 30-minute outage? Tesla's install at the Hornsdale Power Reserve [1] is 129 MW of storage capable of discharging at 100MW. This could supply power for far more than 30 minutes if an outage occurs. Estimated cost is $50 million, which appears to be roughly the same cost as this manufacturing failure, so there's a middle ground to be found. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Wind_Farm#Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Wind_Farm#Hornsdale_...
gtdawg 9y ago
By energy storage, I assume you mean the energy stored in diesel, and released when combusted and used to turn a generator. If you are referring to batteries, do you have any links? I would be really interested to learn more about large scale datacenters that are using something other than diesel/natural gas for backup power.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Microsoft: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/09/17/microsoft-were-eliminating-backup-generators http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/09/17/micro... I mean, it's sort of silly to locate your data centers where you can't use on site renewable generation, no? If you're going to put a datacenter somewhere due to low land costs, but still meets your user latency requirements (speed of light), if you can generate onsite with solar and meet your consumption needs, and battery back it, and have utility power, you don't need large diesel gensets for battery backup (gensets that are rarely used but depreciating constantly). Apple built a 200MW solar farm to power its Reno, NV datacenter. It also built a 50MW solar power plant on 300 acres in Florence, Ariz., which is used to power its Mesa data center. They use 100% renewables to power all of their data centers. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3161732/sustainable-it/apple-to-build-200mw-solar-farm-to-power-data-center.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3161732/sustainable-it... And in manufacturing, Tesla is covering the entire roof of Gigafactory 1 with solar. It can be done.
  - cheeseprocedure 9y ago
    Is hundreds of acres of solar an option in South Korea?
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      It appears so. https://www.koreaexpose.com/solar-agriculture-s-koreas-new-farming-revolution/ https://www.koreaexpose.com/solar-agriculture-s-koreas-new-f...
- greglindahl 9y ago