The Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs has awarded German-based wpd with 1GW of grid connection capacity for two of the developer’s offshore wind projects in Taiwan: a 708MW wind farm off Yunlin and a 350MW project off Taoyuan.
The Yunlin project, which will be built eight kilometres off the coast of Yunlin County, will be the first to be built and will be commissioned in two phases, with 360MW coming online in 2020 and 348MW scheduled to be commissioned the following year.
“Everybody who followed us during the last year knows that our main focus for Yunlin is the speedy construction completed in 2020. While the acknowledgment of this approach by the Government is really great news, we will now concentrate on tying together contractors, banks and investors for this important goal,” said Achim Berge Olsen , Managing Director of wpd offshore GmbH.
The 350MW Guanyin offshore wind farm, located two kilometres off the Taoyuan County, is scheduled to be commissioned in 2021.
Yuni Wang , Managing Director of wpd Taiwan said: “Main focus of our bid for Guanyin is the localization of the supply chain. Together with Taiwanese partners a localization plan has been presented which will bring a lot of knowledge transfer to Taiwan while maintaining quality and time constraints for the project. We would like to express our gratitude to all involved parties.”
The developer stated that it was impressed by the dedication of the Taiwanese government to its offshore wind strategy, and the fact that there have not been any changes or delays during the selection process.