As other Orange County technology companies nervously await more rolling blackouts this summer, Conexant Systems Inc. isn’t sweating.
After the California Public Utilities Commission in April overhauled the so-called interruptible program, in which customers agree to cut power use in emergencies in exchange for lower rates, Conexant was among the first companies to sign up for the deal.
The Newport Beach chip maker had been one of the old program’s biggest critics: Chief Executive Dwight Decker even went to Sacramento to lobby for changes.
Now, under the new version of the program, Conexant can avoid power outages as long as it cuts 15% of the electricity used by its silicon wafer fabrication facility,the plant where it makes chips.
“The Public Utilities Commission offered this program to power customers and we decided to take it,” said Conexant spokeswoman Lisa Briggs. “We’re pretty safe right now.”
The company felt the heat earlier this year when the old interruptible program left the company open to steep fines for keeping electricity turned on when it was notified to shut down. Conexant’s wafer fab requires constant power or all work in progress is ruined.
The Public Utilities Commission has relieved companies of the threat of massive fines and let them opt out of the interruptible program. For those that stay in or want to join, the commission retooled the program in a bid to make it less burdensome while still promoting conservation.
Conexant had been considering several ways to deal with the power crunch, including installing as many as 16 diesel generators to kick in during rolling blackouts. The company opted for cheaper power in exchange for voluntarily reducing its use, a move that allows Conexant time to turn on four 1 megawatt generators that will be installed in coming weeks. In exchange, Conexant is exempt from rotating outages during a stage 3 alert and has a better chance of saving products in production if it does lose power.
Still, Conexant will have to act fast. The Public Utilities Commission only is guaranteeing 30 minutes’ notice before Conexant would have to reduce power. So there still is some risk of losing products since it generally takes longer than that to get a generator running.
“It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to turn it on and then a little longer than that to switch the grid over,” Briggs said. “But we feel pretty comfortable about it.” n
