News Intel concerned about Irish energy costs says report — wants gov to subsidize renewables

[Admin]

Electricity costs in Ireland are up to two times higher than in Arizona and Taiwan, which makes Intel worry.

Intel concerned about Irish energy costs says report — wants gov to subsidize renewables : Read more

 

[ekio]

Wow, talk about corruption...

Hey, the country is not cheap enough, make your people pay for our needs then!

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Intel needs to talk to Microsoft and get a compact self contained nuclear reactor to power it. Free energy!

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

This is why I never understood TSMC going with Arizona for their new fab sites. Higher energy costs and lack of water resources, 2 very relevant inputs in the chip fab world.
Texas, home to Texas Instruments, Samsung, Tower Semi (formerly VLSI/Philips), Qorvo (formerly Micron), TDK, NXP semi (formerly Motorola), X-Fab (formerly IBM), Skorpios Tech (formerly SEMATECH), as well as numerous smaller/specialty fab companies and fab support companies, has ~40% cheaper electricity and mass amounts of local cheap water. With the likes of the University of Texas, Texas State University, and Texas A&M, there is no shortage of trained labor, so it seems like TSMC made a poor choice in location.

 

[Thunder64]

This is why I never understood TSMC going with Arizona for their new fab sites. Higher energy costs and lack of water resources, 2 very relevant inputs in the chip fab world.
Texas, home to Texas Instruments, Samsung, Tower Semi (formerly VLSI/Philips), Qorvo (formerly Micron), TDK, NXP semi (formerly Motorola), X-Fab (formerly IBM), Skorpios Tech (formerly SEMATECH), as well as numerous smaller/specialty fab companies and fab support companies, has ~40% cheaper electricity and mass amounts of local cheap water. With the likes of the University of Texas, Texas State University, and Texas A&M, there is no shortage of trained labor, so it seems like TSMC made a poor choice in location.

Qorvo was Micron? The one by me used to be TriQuint which merged with someone else to become Qorvo. I guess one of them was formlery Micron?

 

[Notton]

Texas

Well there are energy costs, but also reliability.
Texas energy grid comes up in the news more often than in the eastern or western energy grid.
And not in a good way.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

Well there are energy costs, but also reliability.
Texas energy grid comes up in the news more often than in the eastern or western energy grid.
And not in a good way.

That’s not true at all, the last time the Texas grid was mentioned was in February of 2021 when the freak winter storm that broke Texas climate records came out of nowhere and froze the lubricating oil in our wind turbines (Texas never gets much past freezing normally and the oils need to be thick enough to lubricate at 110+ F, so obviously a freak storm with sustained well below freezing temps does not mix with thick oil), blocked the sun out from our solar farms, and froze the natural gas in our pipelines (again, freak low temperatures that we haven’t seen in 100 years of climate records). It was a perfect storm of rapid temperature change, 100 years temperature lows, etc..
Right now, all the energy infrastructure owners are towards the end of enacting their 5 year infrastructure resiliency plans required by the governor after the freak winter storm mentioned above to make sure it never happens again.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

Qorvo was Micron? The one by me used to be TriQuint which merged with someone else to become Qorvo. I guess one of them was formlery Micron?

TriQuint bought their Texas fab from Micron, then merged to become Qorvo. My “formerly”’s are original owner to now because most of the middle owners no one has heard of

 

[bit_user]

Texas, ... has ~40% cheaper electricity

Is that year-round? From what I've heard, electricity can get very expensive during peak demand periods of the summer months.

and mass amounts of local cheap water.

Is the water where they need it? Granted, I doubt it could be a worse situation than in Arizona.

One thing AZ has going for it is closer proximity to the west coast and less time difference vs Taiwan. I'm not sure if that was a factor. I expect there's lots of communication and travel between the two.

And when it comes to energy, I think AZ probably gets much more consistent sunlight. Definitely fewer hurricanes and big rain events.

 

[ieatfishburritos]

This is why I never understood TSMC going with Arizona for their new fab sites. Higher energy costs and lack of water resources, 2 very relevant inputs in the chip fab world.
Texas, home to Texas Instruments, Samsung, Tower Semi (formerly VLSI/Philips), Qorvo (formerly Micron), TDK, NXP semi (formerly Motorola), X-Fab (formerly IBM), Skorpios Tech (formerly SEMATECH), as well as numerous smaller/specialty fab companies and fab support companies, has ~40% cheaper electricity and mass amounts of local cheap water. With the likes of the University of Texas, Texas State University, and Texas A&M, there is no shortage of trained labor, so it seems like TSMC made a poor choice in location.

Phoenix has long had significant semiconductor infrastructure and a large electronics manufacturing presence. NXP (formerly Motorola Freescale), On Semiconductor, Microchip, Intel, etc all have fab sites in Phoenix. Previously ST Microelectronics, Microsemi etc. had fabs.

There is state-of-the-art advanced electronics packaging from Amkor and Intel, along with Aerospace & Defense electronics like Raytheon, Honeywell, Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics etc.

At any rate you have your opinion and others, including TSMC have chosen Phoenix.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

Is that year-round? From what I've heard, electricity can get very expensive during peak demand periods of the summer months.


Is the water where they need it? Granted, I doubt it could be a worse situation than in Arizona.

One thing AZ has going for it is closer proximity to the west coast and less time difference vs Taiwan. I'm not sure if that was a factor. I expect there's lots of communication and travel between the two.

And when it comes to energy, I think AZ probably gets much more consistent sunlight. Definitely fewer hurricanes and big rain events.

I’m not sure about commercial, but for residential electricity, we lock in one rate for a 12/24/or 36 month period. I currently pay 10.4 cents a kilowatt with a 24 month contract. Water is quite abundant in DFW, Austin, and Houston where most fabs are located. Texas has over 7000 lakes of 5,000 acres and up, 7 major rivers, and numerous aquifers to utilize. I agree that AZ gets more consistent sunshine, but the majority of Texas’s green energy comes from wind turbines (30GW in 2020, even more now). Texas has the largest number of wind turbines in the U.S. and would rank 5th in the world if Texas were its own country.

 

[Thunder64]

I’m not sure about commercial, but for residential electricity, we lock in one rate for a 12/24/or 36 month period. I currently pay 10.4 cents a kilowatt with a 24 month contract. Water is quite abundant in DFW, Austin, and Houston where most fabs are located. Texas has over 7000 lakes of 5,000 acres and up, 7 major rivers, and numerous aquifers to utilize. I agree that AZ gets more consistent sunshine, but the majority of Texas’s green energy comes from wind turbines (30GW in 2020, even more now). Texas has the largest number of wind turbines in the U.S. and would rank 5th in the world if Texas were its own country.

You should've given your sales pitch to TSMC years ago 😉.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

Phoenix has long had significant semiconductor infrastructure and a large electronics manufacturing presence. NXP (formerly Motorola Freescale), On Semiconductor, Microchip, Intel, etc all have fab sites in Phoenix. Previously ST Microelectronics, Microsemi etc. had fabs.

There is state-of-the-art advanced electronics packaging from Amkor and Intel, along with Aerospace & Defense electronics like Raytheon, Honeywell, Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics etc.

At any rate you have your opinion and others, including TSMC have chosen Phoenix.

Texas ranks 1st in amount of Federal defense spending with Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Bell, and Boeing being the top 4 defense allocations in Texas. Others being Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, Textron, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, General Electric, Honeywell, NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, United Space Alliance, and countless other organizations.

 

[Vanderlindemedia]

You can't explain to me that Intel is not capable of making their fabs more energy efficient. Do we really need lots of machines other then the crucial ones, running 24/7? I'm pointing fingers at,

- Heavy duty office equipment, running 24/7
- Unneeded heating in various area's
- Unnecessary costs and all that?

It's like Intel is attempting to get the best possible deal from whatever country it is shopping into to satisfy shareholders. It's so stupid.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

You should've given your sales pitch to TSMC years ago 😉.

Hahaha, hindsight is 20/20

 

[ieatfishburritos]

I’m not sure about commercial, but for residential electricity, we lock in one rate for a 12/24/or 36 month period. I currently pay 10.4 cents a kilowatt with a 24 month contract. Water is quite abundant in DFW, Austin, and Houston where most fabs are located. Texas has over 7000 lakes of 5,000 acres and up, 7 major rivers, and numerous aquifers to utilize. I agree that AZ gets more consistent sunshine, but the majority of Texas’s green energy comes from wind turbines (30GW in 2020, even more now). Texas has the largest number of wind turbines in the U.S. and would rank 5th in the world if Texas were its own country.

There is a nuclear power plant right outside of Phoenix (Palo Verde). I'm paying ~8 cents a kilowatt hour w/o any special contract for residential.

People often incorrectly think of Arizona as only a desert and don't understand the mountains and lakes to the north of Phoenix. Much of the water comes from the verde & salt river systems to the north, Colorado River and groundwater. New construction is tied to available water, thus no real issue. Feel free to check out the salt river feeding from Roosevelt lake on google maps. When you talk about water for the state of Texas, I'm not sure its reasonable to compare to Phoenix given the size of Texas; ie much of Texas isn't in proximity to where fabs would be built.

 

[bit_user]

You can't explain to me that Intel is not capable of making their fabs more energy efficient. Do we really need lots of machines other then the crucial ones, running 24/7? I'm pointing fingers at,

EUV is very energy-intensive. I'm sure the factory machines running 24/7 mostly do need to stay up. In regular office buildings they have on campus, it's quite likely the have the HVAC system running on a schedule - that's a standard thing to do.

There is work on more efficient EUV light sources, but that's really a long-term project.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...ithography-provide-10x-power-efficiency-boost
​

Japanese and well as reportedly Chinese and Russians are also reportedly working on more efficient options:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...make-production-of-chips-considerably-cheaper

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...chers-claim-euv-like-lithography-capabilities
​

It's like Intel is attempting to get the best possible deal from whatever country it is shopping into to satisfy shareholders. It's so stupid.

Standard behavior for multinational corporations. Of all the labels I'd give it, "stupid" wouldn't be one of them.

 

[bit_user]

Much of the water comes from the verde & salt river systems to the north, Colorado River and groundwater.

Colorado river is oversubscribed and groundwater is a non-renewable, depleting resource.

New construction is tied to available water, thus no real issue.

In theory, but real estate developers have found loopholes.

 

[ieatfishburritos]

Texas ranks 1st in amount of Federal defense spending with Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Bell, and Boeing being the top 4 defense allocations in Texas. Others being Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, Textron, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, General Electric, Honeywell, NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, United Space Alliance, and countless other organizations.

You're selectively excluding Aerospace from my comment. Overall for Aerospace including Defense, Texas is only slightly larger than AZ, and pales in comparison to California. If you want to normalize by size of state or percent of population working in this industry, Arizona exceeds Texas.

reference: https://www.aia-aerospace.org/wp-content/uploads/Facts-Figures-Report-2023-State-Data.pdf

 

[Dustyboy1492]

Wow, talk about corruption...

Hey, the country is not cheap enough, make your people pay for our needs then!

How is that corruption? This article quotes an unnamed source talking about energy prices. Take off your " I hate Intel hat".

 

[usertests]

$0.15/kWh doesn't seem particularly high. It's less than the USA average for home customers. I guess they are getting sweetheart deals in other places.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

You're selectively excluding Aerospace from my comment. Overall for Aerospace including Defense, Texas is only slightly larger than AZ, and pales in comparison to California. If you want to normalize by size of state or percent of population working in this industry, Arizona exceeds Texas.

reference: https://www.aia-aerospace.org/wp-content/uploads/Facts-Figures-Report-2023-State-Data.pdf

Texas has a massively larger and more diverse economy than Arizona, so yes, Arizona has a larger per-capita employment percentage, but that is a marginal variable at best. The bigger variables is the taxation of those industries, where Texas incurs less than half the tax burden on aerospace and defense companies. And the number of employees and value of the aerospace and defense economy has skyrocketed as of late with mass flight of corporations from California and other high tax burden states, so 2023 figures don’t reflect current levels. The Texas Burea of Labor and statistics has the number of direct employees in the A&D industry increasing 2-fold in 2024 vs 2023 numbers.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

There is a nuclear power plant right outside of Phoenix (Palo Verde). I'm paying ~8 cents a kilowatt hour w/o any special contract for residential.

People often incorrectly think of Arizona as only a desert and don't understand the mountains and lakes to the north of Phoenix. Much of the water comes from the verde & salt river systems to the north, Colorado River and groundwater. New construction is tied to available water, thus no real issue. Feel free to check out the salt river feeding from Roosevelt lake on google maps. When you talk about water for the state of Texas, I'm not sure its reasonable to compare to Phoenix given the size of Texas; ie much of Texas isn't in proximity to where fabs would be built.

Arizona is notorious for extreme droughts…this is not a new phenomenon.
Texas gets 3 times the rainfall as Arizona, so regardless of the number of texas lakes and major river systems, Texas is generally able to maintain reservoir levels with rainfall alone.

The Comanche Peak Nuclear power plant is 50 miles from DFW, and the South Texas Nuclear power plant is 60 miles from Houston.

And the average electricity rate in Phoenix is 14.69 cents per kilowatt, so idk where your 8 cents is coming from, but good for you! That’s a great rate!

 

[Thunder64]

Arizona is notorious for extreme droughts…this is not a new phenomenon.
Texas gets 3 times the rainfall as Arizona, so regardless of the number of texas lakes and major river systems, Texas is generally able to maintain reservoir levels with rainfall alone.

The Comanche Peak Nuclear power plant is 50 miles from DFW, and the South Texas Nuclear power plant is 60 miles from Houston.

And the average electricity rate in Phoenix is 14.69 cents per kilowatt, so idk where your 8 cents is coming from, but good for you! That’s a great rate!

Still not sure who you are selling to...

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

Still not sure who you are selling to...

The person who eats fish burritos. But you are right, there are better uses of my time.