News Blackouts in Taiwan: Foundries & DRAM Makers Unaffected, Chip Packagers Halt Ops

[Admin]

Production of DRAM, logic chips unaffected by Taiwan power outages.

Blackouts in Taiwan: Foundries & DRAM Makers Unaffected, Chip Packagers Halt Ops : Read more

 

[velocityg4]

It seems absurd to me. That any advanced country should suffer blackouts from one failed power plant. You'd think they'd realize shoot happens. There should be enough capacity in the grid to handle the failure of any one power plant.

 

[purple_dragon]

It seems absurd to me. That any advanced country should suffer blackouts from one failed power plant. You'd think they'd realize shoot happens. There should be enough capacity in the grid to handle the failure of any one power plant.

One would think a nation would prepare for some unforeseen events. However, even California often has rolling blackouts in the summertime, mainly around LA. Due to the sheer amount of A/C drawing current of the electrical grid. It would be simple enough to build another plant for the times wind and solar can't produce enough.

 

[InvalidError]

It seems absurd to me. That any advanced country should suffer blackouts from one failed power plant. You'd think they'd realize shoot happens. There should be enough capacity in the grid to handle the failure of any one power plant.

The biggest problem with sudden power plant disconnects is that it takes several minutes for the grid to balance after an unexpected major disturbance and if you don't shed load fast enough, it can trigger more emergency disconnects. Taiwan likely had more than enough capacity for a PLANNED shutdown, just not enough instant reserve capacity for an unexpected one.

Starting backup power plants, especially thermal ones that need to warm up enough to prevent condensation inside turbines before spinning up to speed and synchronizing with the network takes a while. Also, Taiwan isn't particularly large once you exclude the inaccessible mountain areas, they likely do not want to sacrifice more livable land than necessary on spare power plants and rotating grid stabilization.

 

[mikeebb]

One would think a nation would prepare for some unforeseen events. However, even California often has rolling blackouts in the summertime, mainly around LA. Due to the sheer amount of A/C drawing current of the electrical grid. It would be simple enough to build another plant for the times wind and solar can't produce enough.

The frequent blackouts in CA are due to fire weather. Those don't affect much of LA. "Rolling Blackouts" to reduce load due to insufficient capacity system-wide are rare.

That said: one power plant. Yes, it's possible for that to cause blackouts if it's big enough. That's what caused several major blackouts in the US - loss of a large plant or a major transmission line at the wrong time can trip a bunch of others on overload if the load can't be reduced fast enough.

 

[GoofyOne]

Over here in the land down under, we have blackouts when it's really hot in the summertime. Usually it's all planned in advance though, so people are given notice that it's their area that's having a planned blackout that day, and how long it's going to be ie: 12hrs or whatever.

They plan for it, and they don't normally do the same areas all the time, they kind of share the blackouts out amongst everybody, just not all at the same time.


{GoofyOne's 2c worth}