Taiwan's TSMC says suffered a brief power dip, electricity now restored | Reuters
 
Tech powerhouse Taiwan resumed power early in the evening on Thursday following several hours of phased blackouts islandwide, a problem that briefly impacted major semiconductor firm TSMC. Around 4 million homes were affected on the island of 24 million people after an outage at a coal- and gas-fired power plant that was connected to a failure of the electricity grid. The world's biggest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (2330.TW), , said some of its facilities suffered a "brief power dip", but power had been restored. Officials at three major science parks in Hsinchu, Tainan and Taichung, where TSMC and other semiconductor firms all have large operations, told Reuters there was no impact on the operations of the major chipmakers.
 
Normal power was restored at 8 p.m. (1200GMT), electricity provided Taipower said, with supplies having been affected from early afternoon. Speaking to reporters at the presidential office, President Tsai Ing-wen apologised for the blackouts, which left hundreds trapped in elevators across Taiwan. "Power plants were running normally. This was not a problem with the plants. The cause of the incident was the power grid," she said. "This highlights the importance of the balance of Taiwan's regional power supply and highlights the importance of risk management of the grid."
 
In a text message just before the power failed around 3 p.m. (0700 GMT), the government said its grid did not have sufficient electricity capacity after the outage at the power plant in the southern port city of Kaohsiung. Several cities reported blackouts, as a top official appealed for calm. "The government has a grasp of the situation," cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng told reporters. "Citizens please remain calm and there's no need for panic." Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua said around 4 million homes were affected.
 
The main international airport near Taipei, the capital, and the high speed rail line were operating normally, the transport ministry said. Fire officials said they had rescued more than 400 people trapped in elevators, many of them in northern Taiwan. Power went on and off intermittently in central Taipei, though it never totally went out.
 
At least this time wafer production was unaffected in my opinion. 

Any reason to push up prices, and profits, when you have a monopoly, as it seems consumers will pay again.

........and a huge manufacturing plant has NO backup generator or plans in place for such things.?
 RIGHT !!!   

Brad_Hawthorne
TSMC is negligent in everything happening with them. It's the height of gullibility that they'd think you'd believe that it's someone else's fault that they're getting brownouts in a production facility. Either way, the cost will be passed on to the customer.

And to think that not only the issues with power generation, but with water in Taiwan, it’s like a one, two punch to the business model.  If I was TSMC, I would be having desalination and power generation plants on the sites of my manufacturing facilities, but hey that decreases profits.  Not sure capitalists think that way or are willing to part with dollars to protect their business.  History has proven that this is much tougher than it should be.  It’s a monopoly until it’s not.

Holy heck.
 
Hundreds trapped in elevators across Taiwan and my first thought is "MY GRAPHICS CARD THOUGH".
 
I need some serious introspection time.

Shouldn't these foundries have their own independent power stations? If crypto mining operations can manage it, so can they...