Century Iron & Steel Industrial Co (CISI, 世紀鋼構) yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Orsted A/S to become the preferred supplier of underwater wind turbine foundations to the Danish company, as part of the Taiwanese company’s effort to tap the nation’s renewable energy industry.
CISI’s underwater substructures for wind turbines are to be used in building Orsted’s offshore wind farms off the coast of Changhua County, according to the firms.
“The collaboration with Orsted not only represents CISI’s corporate transformation, but also marks the progress of development in Taiwan’s renewable energy industry,” CISI chairman Lai Wen-hsiang (賴文祥) told reporters on the sidelines after the signing ceremony in Taipei.
The project with Orsted is to be carried out by CISI’s subsidiary Century Wind Power Co Ltd (CWP, 世紀離岸風電), Lai added.
The Danish energy company approached 170 Taiwanese companies over the past year and narrowed its search to 15 local partners for close collaboration, including CISI, Orsted Asia-Pacific general manager and Taiwan branch chairman Matthias Bausenwein said.
“CWP has a strong background in large-scale steel manufacturing and has shown a strong drive to invest in manufacturing offshore wind farms,” Bausenwein said.
Based on the MOU, the Danish company is to share its knowledge in developing offshore wind farms with CWP, helping the Taiwanese firm to build the underwater substructures for Orsted’s wind turbines, the two firms’ said in the joint statement.
CWP is to invest NT$5 billion (US$165.54 million) in purchasing equipment and building two plants at Taipei Port, with the plants scheduled to be in trial operation before the end of 2019 and supplying foundations to Orsted in 2020, Lai said.
In addition to the two plants at Taipei Port, which have a combined size of 16 hectares, CWP plans to rent another 16 hectares of land at the port to store the underwater substructure jackets for the wind turbine foundations, Lai said.
Orsted’s offshore wind farm projects in Taiwan include four sites located 35km to 60km off the Changhua coast. The projects’ total capacity is estimated to be 2.4 gigawatts, supplying electricity to 2.8 million households in the nation.
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