Floating systems for offshore wind farms in deeper waters are key to fulfilling Taiwan’s wind energy goals and the government should commit to a plan supporting the new technology, developers and industry insiders said at the Wind Energy Asia forum in Kaohsiung on Thursday.
Floating systems were first developed for the oil and gas industries, and there are many pilot projects for floating offshore wind farm systems around the world, including in Japan and the UK.
However, the cost is still prohibitively high, RWE Renewables Taiwan business development head Chong Yu-foong (張友鴻) said.
Photo: AP
“It is not correct to call it an immature technology, because we already know that it works,” Chong said. “The challenge is to make it commercially viable.”
Experts say that 50m is widely considered to be the deepest at which fixed-bottom wind turbines can be installed, while some think that the envelope can be pushed to 60m, with the costs and complications of installing the turbines increasing with the depth.
Taiwan’s prime shallow-water sites are off the shore of Changhua County in the west, where demand for electricity is high.
“Demand is centered in the northwest of Taiwan,” Chong said.
“The northwest also has the greatest wind yields, but waters there are more than 50m deep,” he added.
Chong estimates that there are only about 10 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind sites around Taiwan that are shallow enough for fixed-bottom installations.
About 5.5GW of that capacity has been allocated to various developers as a part of the government’s “phase 2” offshore wind development plan.
This means that to complete the “phase 3” plan, developers would have no choice but to move to deeper waters.
There might also be “supply-chain opportunities” for domestic manufacturers, as there are currently no dominant established players specializing in floating offshore wind systems, Chong said.
“Traditional electricity cables are hard and stiff, but floating systems require flexible, dynamic cables. This is just one of the new manufacturing opportunities,” he said.
If Taiwan takes advantage by moving first in the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwanese floating system suppliers could have an advantage going forward, he said.
“With the appropriate government support, we could see the formation of a floating wind industrial cluster here in Taiwan,” Chang said. “If that does not happen, the cluster will probably be in Japan.”
Describing floating systems as “feasible and bankable,” Great Circle Wind Associates (大環風能管理服務) managing partner Eddie Yang joined other developers in calling for the government to establish two to three “stepping stone” projects of about 100 megawatts (MW) in size, supported by a feed-in tariff scheme.
“Taiwan does not need a demonstration project, we can go straight to 90MW, try three different floating systems and see what works best,” Yang said.
However, not everybody is expecting floating systems to become a reality any time soon.
Wind industry consultant Manuel Zehr said that he is skeptical that floating systems would become cheap and reliable enough to be in use commercially.
“Maybe in eighty years,” said Zehr, director of international projects with Formosan Business Support Co, recounting watching a streaming demonstration of a floating turbine that toppled in the water.
Gert Eriksen, head engineer of Wind Energy Pro, a staffing and consulting service provider, said that floating systems have pros and cons.
“The advantage is you can build it right in the port — there’s no need for heavy-lift vessels — but the disadvantage is that it is very, very expensive,” Eriksen said.
He said that offshore wind developers have previously taken a chance on new technology.
“It’s just like when we started going to the jacket systems from the monopiles,” Eriksen said. “In the beginning, there was a lot of uncertainty, but now they are the industry standard.”
Wind Energy Asia executive vice president Robert Campbell said that the future is floating systems.
“Two years ago, nobody talked about it,” Campbell added. “Now, everybody is trying to figure out how to do it.”
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
RSS