In the countryside of Cambridgeshire, a British semiconductor start-up was ready to expand beyond its lab and open a manufacturing base. But the company’s ambitions came with unexpected costs to bring enough electricity to the new site. The potential bill? One million pounds.
The company, Paragraf, makes chips using graphene, an ultrathin carbon. Its devices can be used to check for defects in electric vehicle batteries to prevent fires, or work in quantum computers. After acquiring the site in 2023, Paragraf made plans to ramp up its weekly manufacturing capabilities from tens of thousands of devices to millions.
But the cost of increasing the power supply to the location, a result of years of underinvestment in Britain’s electricity grid, is diverting money — and time — from hiring and equipment purchases, said Simon Thomas, Paragraf’s chief executive.
“Our biggest kind of…
