[cheeseprocedure]

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-detai...) - but these will last ~15 seconds under full load.

[toomuchtodo]

> 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_...

[jsjohnst]

> but these will last ~15 seconds under full load.

Flywheels are an alternative for battery backups. They are used to give enough time for generators to come online and stabilize.

[greglindahl]

As a layman, can you explain why a fab is producing silicon ingots? Instead of consuming them. Because they are two different things.

[cheeseprocedure]

Nope - silly assumption on my part.