TSMC will use wind power on a large scale
As the world’s largest foundry, TSMC has a huge semiconductor production facility and also has a huge demand for energy. This year, the drought in Taiwan caused water shortages and power outages, which brought a lot of trouble to TSMC’s production. TSMC has built a wastewater treatment center in Tainan, Taiwan, to increase the processing capacity of industrial wastewater and reduce dependence on external water sources. By 2024, it will be able to provide 67,000 tons of water per day for production, meeting at least half of the water demand.
After solving the water supply problem, TSMC turned its attention to the power supply problem. According to media reports recently, TSMC and a subsidiary of German renewable energy supplier Wpd AG signed an agreement to purchase wind power with an installed capacity of 1.2GW, which is the world’s largest renewable energy cooperation project. Among them, 600MW of installed capacity is for land-based wind power generation equipment, and the other 600MW is for offshore wind power generation equipment. At present, the relevant offshore wind power generation facilities are still under construction, and the funds of this cooperation agreement will complete the third phase of the construction plan for offshore wind power farms.
Multiple power outages in Taiwan this year have caused certain losses to TSMC. Although the fabs with mature process nodes are affected, as TSMC builds new fabs with N3 and N2 process nodes, power supply has once again become the focus of attention. If there is an energy problem in a wafer fab with advanced process technology, the loss will be much greater. At the same time, the application of wind power on a larger scale will help the promotion of green energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
