Japanese Mitsui & Co. will acquire a 50% stake in Yushan Energy, a company holding 40% of the Hai Long offshore wind farm in Taiwan, according to Bloomberg , thus securing a stake in the project currently owned by Yushan Energy and Canadian Northland Power (60%).
The originally proposed Hai Long development comprises two projects (Hai Long 2 and Hai Long 3) with a total capacity of around 1.2GW to be delivered through first installing a 500MW wind farm, followed by adding 700MW at a later stage.
The Hai Long 2 project received an approval for 300MW of grid capacity at a feed-in tariff (FIT) allocation round on 30 April. According to the information on the website of the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Hai Long 2 grid capacity initially proposed by the developer was 532MW.
Upon receiving the approval for 300MW, Northland Power and Yushan Energy informed that the turbine supplier selection process was already underway and that they were negotiating construction contracts for the project, scheduled to be put into operation in 2024. The developers are now also working on completing all remaining regulatory and permit-related activities, including signing of a power purchase agreement to secure the feed-in tariff, which they expect to have in place in late 2018.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs granted less grid capacity than asked for several projects at the allocation round in April and most of those developers are anticipated to bid for more through a competitive procedure expected to be completed in June, when Taiwan will award further 2GW of grid capacity for offshore wind, adding to the already procured 3.8GW.
Offshore WIND Staff