TSMC and other major high-tech firms in Taiwan have reported little impact from a five-hour rolling power blackout that affected many parts of the country on May 13.

TSMC stated some of its fabs saw brief voltage drops as a result of the outage following electricity distribution issues at a power plant in Kaohsiung, but the foundry house soon activated emergency backup generators to maintain normal production and minimize possible impact.

UMC said production at its fabs at Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP) was not affected by short-time voltage drop, and operations at its plants at Hsinchu Science Park (HSP) in northern Taiwan remained normal.

Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) reported normal power supply and operations at its plants at HSP and in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan.

Flexible PCB maker Flexium Interconnect said its plant at Dafa Industrial Park in the southern city of Kaohsiung was not affected. GaAs foundry Advanced Wireless Semiconductor, top passive component vendor Yageo, and panel makers AUO and Innolux also reported normal operations at their plants at STSP and other science parks in Taiwan.

Leading backend house ASE Technology indicated that its manufacturing operations in Kaohsiung were slightly affected. ChipMOS Technologies also reported its gold bumping lines for display driver ICs at its plant in Chubei, northern Taiwan, was more or less impacted, with plants in other parts of Taiwan unscathed.

The STSP administration also noted that only seven out of some 40 companies using 22.8kV power supply system in the park were affected by the power blackout, and most of them, operating on a smaller scale, are engaged in biotechnology and electronics components segments.

Power rationing was implemented in different areas across the country at 50-minute intervals starting from 3:00 pm to 8:00 pm Thursday since the power plant was unable to distribute normal output of 2.2 million kilowatts.

By DIGITIMES