Home / Semiconductor
Powering the Dholera fab
A semiconductor fab needs a very large, continuous and extremely reliable supply of electricity, because it runs around the clock and a power interruption can spoil wafers worth a great deal. Reliable, and increasingly clean, power is therefore a central factor in choosing where to build a fab. Dholera was planned with underground power infrastructure and sits beside the Dholera solar park, where about 300 MW is commissioned within a 1,000 MW sanctioned Phase-I and a 5,000 MW ultimate target, giving the region a substantial power backbone.
Last checked 2026-08-11 · every figure below carries its source
Why fabs are so power hungry
A semiconductor fab is one of the most energy-intensive facilities in modern industry. It runs continuously, every hour of every day, because stopping and restarting the delicate processes is costly and risky. Power feeds not only the process tools themselves but also the vast supporting systems that keep the fab running, including the cleanroom air handling and filtration, the production of ultrapure water, the delivery and abatement of specialty gases and chemicals, and precise temperature and humidity control. All of these must operate without pause. A large, high-volume fab therefore consumes electricity on the scale of a small town. Because of this, the availability, cost and reliability of power are among the first questions asked when siting a fab, and a region that cannot guarantee ample, steady electricity is simply not a candidate. This heavy, constant demand is one of the defining infrastructure requirements of chip manufacturing.
Reliability matters more than almost anything
For a fab, the reliability of power can matter even more than its cost. Because a wafer spends weeks moving through hundreds of process steps, an unexpected power interruption at the wrong moment can ruin the wafers in process, each carrying many valuable chips, and can knock sensitive tools out of calibration. Even a very brief dip or fluctuation in voltage, too short for a person to notice, can spoil a production run. For this reason fabs invest heavily in protecting their power, using uninterruptible supplies, backup generation and equipment that smooths out fluctuations, so that the process never sees an interruption. But those protections are a last line of defence. The foundation is a grid connection that is genuinely stable and dependable. A region prone to outages or voltage swings forces a fab to spend far more on protection and still carries risk, which is why fabs gravitate to places with strong, well-managed electrical infrastructure.
The push toward clean power
Because fabs consume so much electricity, their power source has become an environmental and reputational issue as well as a technical one. A fab drawing heavily on fossil-fuel electricity carries a large carbon footprint, so chip makers increasingly want access to renewable energy, both to reduce emissions and to meet commitments made to customers and governments. Access to solar, wind or other clean generation is now a genuine advantage when a region competes to attract a fab. This is where a large nearby solar resource becomes strategically valuable, since it can supply clean power at scale and support a fab's sustainability goals. Clean power does not remove the need for reliability, though. Renewable generation varies with the weather and time of day, so it has to be combined with grid connections, storage or other sources to provide the steady, round-the-clock supply a fab demands. The ideal is ample clean generation backed by a dependable grid.
Dholera's power infrastructure
Dholera was planned as a smart city with power built into its design. A DICDL (Dholera Industrial City Development Limited, the company that builds the city) account of the Activation Area (the first phase of Dholera to get roads, water, power and drainage), the phase-1 zone, describes underground power distribution as part of the buried utility network, alongside information and communications ducts, piped gas and water. The smart-city Integrated Command and Control Centre in the ABCD building is designed to monitor and manage utilities including power. Underground distribution and centralised monitoring are the kind of arrangement that supports reliable supply for demanding industrial users. Beyond the city's own distribution, Dholera's biggest power asset is the adjacent solar park. This combination of planned distribution infrastructure and a large local generation source is precisely the sort of power backbone a fab needs, though the honest point is that the region's power systems, like the rest of Dholera, are still building out toward their full planned scale rather than complete.
The Dholera solar park
The Dholera Ultra-Mega Solar Power Park is a major part of the region's energy story and a source of potential clean power for industry. Its ultimate announced target is 5,000 MW, or 5 GW, expected by around 2030, but that is a target and not installed capacity. According to a CEA quarterly report as on September 2025, Phase-I of 1,000 MW is sanctioned, with around 300 MW commissioned and 700 MW under development targeted for March 2027, developed by a set of companies and affected by some tariff and regulatory disputes. Tata Power has commissioned a 300 MW plant at Dholera, described as using single-axis solar trackers, though whether this is exactly the same 300 MW cited by the CEA is not cleanly reconcilable and should be flagged. The honest bottom line is that roughly 300 MW is operational, 1,000 MW is sanctioned for Phase-I, and 5,000 MW is a long-range target. This growing clean-power resource strengthens the case for energy-intensive industry in the region.
Power and the Dholera fab in context
For the Tata Electronics and PSMC fab, the region's power infrastructure is part of what makes Dholera viable as a fab location. A fab of its scale, targeting up to 50,000 wafers per month, will be a large and continuous power user that depends on a reliable supply, and access to the growing Dholera solar park offers a route to cleaner electricity that fits modern sustainability expectations. Specific figures for the fab's own power consumption are not in the public fact base, so they should not be stated, and any such numbers should be described qualitatively as large rather than invented. It is also worth being precise about the solar park, since its 5,000 MW is a target and only about 300 MW is operational, so it should not be presented as if it already powers the fab. The accurate framing is that Dholera provides a planned power backbone and a growing local clean-energy source, while the fab itself is under construction, with first trial silicon targeted around December 2026.