Power to the Fabs?
03/01/2001
Are rolling blackouts in California an anomoly created by a crazy-quilt scheme cooked up by state lawmakers, or is it a warning to the whole country?
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It's easy to chuckle about the system California legislators conjured up to cover its power needs (that's if you don't actually live, or work in a fab, there). The utilities were forced to sell off much of their already inadequate generating capacity, then buy the power they needed on the spot market while being forbidden to work out long-term supply contracts. Prices to consumers were regulated, without regard to costs. This cockeyed scheme was called "deregulation." (The state's utilities reportedly lobbied for some provisions, guided perhaps by managers like the one familiar to Dilbert readers.)
Amazingly, the scheme actually worked for a while, but as supplies tightened around the US in a robust economic expansion, spot prices climbed into the stratosphere and California utilities went billions of dollars into debt. Some plants shifted to natural gas to generate cleaner power, but that is now in short supply and prices are off the charts.
California's permitting process has stretched out to several years, and is so onerous that no company has built a power plant in California for over a decade. One utility reportedly is considering building a generating plant in Utah, where siting is simpler, and running power lines back to California. Local TV showed an 80 MW twin turbine facility in Santa Clara that could not be started up in spite of the rolling blackouts because of stringent pollution regulations.
Dim lights or a couple of hours without TV can be an annoyance. But for some users, such as hospitals with dialysis machines, or wafer fabs, continuous and reliable electric power is absolutely essential. With a couple of hours warning, fabs could get auxiliary power going while taking some processes off line. Sometimes, though, power was shut down without warning, creating lots of test wafers.
Could this be a preview of power shortages that could spread across the country? Some believe that it is. "New York is next," commented one pundit, as news outlets tried to dramatize the crisis. Demand for power has been rising much faster than the generating supply. The whole Western power grid depends on hydroelectric power that is way down because of low precipitation in the Northwest. The high costs and long delays in getting approvals and then building power plants has discouraged investment in many regions. It has become impossible to get a nuclear plant approved in the US, even though modern designs are nothing like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. Older plants break down frequently and must be shut down more often for maintenance or repair, and many use inefficient, more-polluting generating equipment.
 (Photo courtesy of Winbond) |
Take a look around you. Everywhere there is more electronic equipment, for business, commerce, entertainment, and consumer use. Moore's Law keeps adding more circuitry to chips, and the quest for speed boosts current and power consumption. There are little fans cooling millions of Pentiums, which need to be recharged even if they run on batteries. In high-tech centers such as Silicon Valley, Internet data centers are huge power hogs, and workstations and fast servers inhale kilowatts. The latest fad is the Web hotel, geared to putting everyone on-line all the time, using as much power as two-and-a-half office towers. Population has also been rising fast in high-tech areas. At one time, houses in Austin went for a song, but not now. The well-wired techie is checking out equipment to download streaming video over high-speed DSL links and looking into home networking. Monster TVs are big sellers, and some of today's fastest chips are in millions of game machines.
It's going to get a lot worse! And we are not building anywhere near the generating capacity the US will need in just a couple of years if we keep buying all this cool new electronic gear. Pollution is a growing problem, and building plants with low emissions is expensive. But that is what we need to do. Highly efficient plants are now possible, and even many older power plants could be upgraded. An MIT study a few years ago (widely ignored by utilities) concluded that the cost of replacing old generators with much more efficient new technology in the Northeast could produce a fairly quick pay-back. There could also be a lot more localized power generation, like co-generators in office parks and fuel cells in large factories or office complexes. With an enlightened energy policy, wind farms and solar-paneled roofs might become much more widespread, lowering dependence on imported oil and scarce natural gas.
California is not standing still. While neighboring states seethed because their own power bills were rising as they were forced to feed electricity to California even though their own supplies were tight, Sacramento stepped up efforts to get more electric cars on the road faster.
That'll sure help!
Robert Haavind
Editor in Chief