Although the state had been in a power emergency for months, any sense of complacency vanished this Monday and Tuesday when the lights began to go out in some areas. Those random blackouts were the first to roil the state since mid-January, as the state had managed to buy adequate supplies until this week. By Wednesday, the immediate crisis had passed. But the period of peak power demand still looms ahead, when summer air conditioner use will put a huge strain on the state's fragile power grid. Although this week's blackouts appeared to skip over the state's fabs, companies still had to scale back production to reduce their exposure.
Semiconductor is a very complex process.
You'd be taking a big chance by running wafers normally and suddenly the electricity went out. What you do is keep wafers out of the machines. That's what we've been doing. When a Stage 3 power alert occurs, Microsemi Corp. begins to restrict production at its fab in Garden Grove, according to Bill Maloney, wafer fab supervisor. The more urgent types of projects we split up and will not risk them all in the fab at any one time.