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Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

In some cases they don't have any practical ability to.

The Texas winter storm resulted in a lot of scrap at semiconductor lines due to power loss. There are industries that are completely dependent on grid power. You can't generate enough on site to back up 100% of your operation. Think about how much power one EUV source consumes.

The only reason Samsung is building additional factories in Texas is because the local utilities are effectively treating them as a critical load. The new plants are right by the ERCOT operation center and likely have access to the same cranking paths that the grid uses for black starts.

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I have no idea how much power an EUV source consumes, but I’m surprised to hear that it’s more than a handful of kW. What’s the right ballpark?

ASML says 1.3 MW for a single system. So off by three orders of magnitude.

https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2024/a-sustainability-m...

Thanks for sharing the link! 1.3MW really isn’t that high of a load though. Thats a very straightforward load to be able to support via diesel generators. As an example, a typical large datacenter uses an order of magnitude more power, yet stays online following a grid outage.

It's 1743 horsepower.

Yep, you did the simple math. 2MW generators are rather common place, they even come in portable (as in on a trailer) form.

This is the power consumed by the light source for one photo tool on one line.

There are thousands of tools. Material handling robots, compressors, HVAC, pumps, an entire data center within the factory, etc.

> This is the power consumed by the light source for one photo tool on one line.

Actually, it’s not if you read the linked article. Try harder with your indignant reply next time to an entirely factual post. Sheesh!

Further, here’s a >one hundred megawatt generator installation (yes, used, but it’s always call for quote otherwise online) for a small fraction of the price of the EUV machine in case I need to further prove my point.

https://www.uspeglobal.com/listings/1705462-used-100-mw-2004...

There’s also multiple GE LMS100 generators installed in Texas and they each provide ~115MW of power. So not unprecedented for installation in the state either!

From source article…

> For example, a lot of that 1.3 MW went into cooling the system and handling the hydrogen flow used to prevent contamination build up.

>They require up to 10.2 gigawatt hours per tool annually

First hit off google.

Assuming they run them 24/7 that amounts to a power usage a bit over 1 megawatt, but they could be pulsed for all I know and use quite a bit more

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