Ørsted Champions Local Content in Taiwan

Ørsted has signed two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with two Taiwanese companies as part of the Greater Changhua offshore wind projects in Taiwan.

Ørsted signed the first MoU earlier this month with Century Wind Power (CWP), a subsidiary of Century Iron & Steel Industrial, to collaborate on turbine foundation manufacturing for the project.

The agreement includes both parties working on the goal to make CWP become a preferred supplier to commence the substructure serial manufacturing works at Taipei Harbor in early 2020, and to be able to build the foundations for the Greater Changhua project right afterwards.

Matthias Bausenwein, Ørsted’s General Manager Asia Pacific and Chairman Taiwan, said: “Local content has been placed at the center of our project development activities. In the past year, the local Ørsted team has met over 170 Taiwanese companies and identified 15 companies for close collaboration. CWP has a very strong background in large-scale steel manufacturing and shown significant ambition to invest in offshore wind manufacturing business.”

The company signed the latest MoU with China Steel Corporation (CSC) under which the two companies will work jointly to ensure that CSC’s production lines are ready in 2020 to manufacture and assemble underwater foundation substructures, with the aim to deliver the substructures to the Greater Changhua projects from 2021.

“Based on our current timelines for the Greater Changhua projects, we want to secure local supplier’s capacity for key components like underwater foundation substructures,” Bausenwein said.

Ørsted’s Greater Changhua project includes four sites located 35 to 60 kilometers off the Changhua coast. The total capacity is expected to be 2.4GW, which could power 2.8 million households in Taiwan, the company said.

Currently, Greater Changhua projects are in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) review stage, and once the permits are received, the onshore construction will start in 2019.

In Taiwan, Ørsted, former DONG Energy, also owns 35% of the Formosa I project in Maoli, which is Taiwan’s first offshore wind project.