Taiwan’s offshore wind industry ready for launch

Next March, Taiwan is embarking on the construction of an 80 wind turbine, 640 MW wind farm - Asia-Pacific’s largest.

Taiwan’s offshore wind industry has, so far, tracked that of the US. To date, both have completed just one small-scale project. 

But Taiwan’s trajectory will soon outpace the US. Yunlin, Asia-Pacific’s largest wind farm, is due to start construction next March, some five miles off the coast of western Taiwan. The project will install a total capacity of 640MW, through 80 wind turbines of 8MW each.

Offshore wind promises to be a key component of Taiwan’s renewable energy and the country is moving at top speed to ramp up wind-driven power. “It’s very ambitious,” said Matthias Mross, managing partner of Global Renewables Shipbrokers. Hamburg-based GRS has the contract for procurement consulting services for transport and installation of the project.

German developer Wpd AG heads the Yunlin project, along with a consortium of Japanese power and utilities interests. Wpd also has a contract to construct a 350MW offshore wind farm near Taoyuan County.

The Netherlands’ Jumbo Maritime and Malaysia’s Sapura Energy were awarded contracts for the transportation and installation of the mono-piles for the first project. It’s Sapura’s first foray into offshore wind.

Wpd isn’t the only European wind developer making forays into Taiwan. Denmark’s Ørsted, the world’s largest wind power developer, confirmed in April that it will build two offshore wind farms in Taiwan totaling 900MW, with construction due to begin in 2021.

Taiwan demonstrates how offshore wind is sweeping through East Asia. China is projected to become the world’s largest offshore wind generator in the next three years, overtaking the current leader, United Kingdom. By 2022, China will have installed almost 11GW of offshore wind power, according to FTI Consulting.