The chip contract manufacturer Globalfoundries (GF) has had its own power plant at the Dresden branch since 2005 to cover its own electricity and heating requirements. After the last expansion in 2007, Globalfoundries now wants to build one of the most modern Energy Supply Centers (EVC) in Europe. The planning and approval procedures have already started.
Operating your own power plant with natural gas is cheaper than purchasing energy – and it is also more reliable. A large-scale power outage in the Dresden area last September affected the semiconductor manufacturers Bosch and Infineon, but not Globalfoundries. Long-term power failures that cannot be intercepted with emergency power generators can destroy silicon wafers in production and thus set production back by weeks or months.
So far, GF has been using nine natural gas engines of the type TCG 2032 V16 from MWM. The energy supply center II can supply 35 megawatts (MW) of electricity, 38 MW of heat or 53 MW of cooling for the semiconductor plant without interruption. For comparison: modern supercomputers take up to 30 MW of purely electrical energy. Globalfoundries’ semiconductor plant requires around one terawatt hour of energy per year. Of this, 500 gigawatt hours are each accounted for by the need for electrical energy and the need for energy for heating and cooling.
(Image: GF Dresden)
Greener, but not completely green
For the new power plant, Globalfoundries continues to use natural gas as the primary energy source, but uses more modern engines with an average overall efficiency of more than 90 percent. The Energy Supply Center should thus require 30 percent less natural gas than before and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least a quarter (100,000 tons of CO₂) to around 300,000 tons of CO₂.
GF is converting the recooling system for the new power supply to a closed system in order to reduce water consumption by around 80 percent. Using combined heat and power, the waste heat from the natural gas engines is fed into the heating and cooling system. The principle is practically appropriate at GF, since the power plant is right next to the semiconductor plant – nice to see on Google Maps (the power plant runs under the name “Energieversorgungscenter Dresden-Wilschdorf GmbH & Co. KG”).
In the communication, GF also writes: “To support the cooling of the waste heat generated in production, GF uses the largest ice storage facility in Europe. It is used to cover load peaks and to store energy. It will be further expanded in the course of modernization.”
The bottom line is that GF Dresden is still a long way from being CO₂-neutral, but it is taking a major step in this direction. The conversion of the power plant will begin in 2022 without interrupting chip production, so it is progressing continuously. GF estimates that it will take five years to complete. The energy supplier SachsenEnergie AG is supporting GF in the project.
(mma)