Seems a bit strange that Phoenix would be a desirable place to build a fab, given how water-intensive most processes are. Yes, the water can and should be recycled... but it just seems weird to build a plant like that in one of the parts of the country that will probably never have enough fresh water, compared to other areas where they can't get it out of the way fast enough.
Is it the labor pool there that makes it attractive? Energy costs? Something about state/local subsidies?
The reason I heard is that Phoenix is seismically stabile, and weather stabile. Both of those things can cause power outages which are incredibly expensive at a fab.
Quakes and flooding can kill generators. You can be smart and build them on elevated earthworks, but if the event is severe enough something will fail.
Rather feasible with a set of natural gas turbine plants. Pipelines and local storage would be expensive but doable - depending on the economic damage of the plant going offline. Cost share it with a data centre facility to reduce the per megawatt cost even further.
I mean, so too is a genset a powerplant. It's really just a question of scale and generation capacity. Imagine we're talking about a cell versus a battery. Same thing really.
Is it the labor pool there that makes it attractive? Energy costs? Something about state/local subsidies?