Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday announced that it is teaming up with Taiwan International Ports Corp (台灣港務) to build the nation’s first offshore wind port in Taichung, as part of the state-run utility’s efforts to help accelerate the nation’s “green” energy development.
The project, in which Taipower is to invest more than NT$3 billion (US$98.52 million), is to be the largest offshore wind port in Southeast Asia, the utility said.
“This project will play a major role in the development of the ‘green’ energy industry in Taiwan,” Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Yang Wei-fuu (楊偉甫) said in Taichung while overseeing the ceremony.
The offshore wind port is to consist of two wharfs and a plot of land at Taichung Port (台中港) with a combined size of 12.8 hectares.
Onshore assembly on the wharfs would reduce the risk and difficulty of assembling the 32m wind turbine pylons and their 32.5m-long blades, the utility said.
As the planned offshore wind farm is only 40km from the Taichung harbor, it would shorten the time it would take ships to deliver the prepared wind turbines, Taipower said.
Taiwan International Ports is to expand the weight capacity of each wharf from 3 tonnes per square meter to 50 tonnes per square meter. It is also to dump 1.5m thick layer of gravel on the seabed to enhance its capacity to handle the weight of the turbines.
Taipower chairman Chu Wen-chen (朱文成) said the company could assemble at least 30 wind turbines per year when the weight capacity expansion plan is completed in 2019, which means a total of 600 wind turbines could be assembled in the next 20 years.
Taipower plans to gradually assemble 360 wind turbines over the next 20 years and lease the wharf to other power companies to assemble their components, Chu said.
The utility has also initiated a program to install a batch of 22 offshore wind turbines with a combined installed capacity of between 108 and 110 megawatts by the end of 2020 off the coast of Changhua County, Chu said.
The 22 wind turbines would generate 360 million kilowatt-hours, enough power for 100,000 households, Chu said, adding that the first of the 22 wind turbines would be assembled in June 2019 at the earliest.
The second phase of the project would be to install 116 offshore wind turbines with a combined installed capacity of 900 megawatts, Chu said, without offering a time frame.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS