The Netherlands Trade and Investment Office (NTIO) yesterday launched a program to cultivate trainers for the nation’s offshore wind power industry, with National Taiwan University (NTU) serving as the leader among its academic partners.
More than 30 Dutch enterprises have been drawn to Taiwan’s offshore wind farm industry, with more than 10 currently involved in local wind farm projects, but they face a shortage of talent, NTIO Representative Guy Wittich told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Wittich added that he realized the challenges the industry faces, especially with the inauguration of the nation’s first offshore wind farm, Formosa 1, off the coast of Miaoli County in November last year.
Photo: CNA
Considering the importance of talent cultivation and the rapport between the Netherlands and Taiwan, the Dutch government has approved a program to fund institutions to work with their Taiwanese counterparts to develop trainers for the industry, he said.
Through the program, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, the Wind Energy Institute at the Delft University of Technology, and water research institute Deltares are to design training courses in cooperation with NTU and the Metal Industries Research and Development Center, he said.
The program aims to cultivate 20 trainers, following previous collaborative programs on promoting maintenance and operation training in 2016 to 2017, Wittich said, thanking the Taiwanese government for its willingness to promote public-private partnerships and work with foreign firms and institutions.
As the lead domestic academic participant in the program, NTU two years ago established a curricular program on offshore wind power generation and last year sent a delegation to the Netherlands to meet with experts in the field, NTU vice president Chen Ming-syan (陳銘憲) said.
The training courses include general wind farm, metocean and seabed data analysis, offshore wind farm project development, wind turbine design, maintenance and operation, said Chiang Mao-hsiung (江茂雄), chair of the Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering and the university’s representative to manage the program.
CWind Taiwan (臺英風電) founder Vincent Tsai (蔡明格), who was a student of Chiang’s, said that many graduates of the ocean engineering department — previously known as the shipbuilding department — had decided to work in the semiconductor industry instead because of the better pay.
However, students trained in ocean engineering can now apply their learning to the offshore wind power industry, which has a serious shortage of bue and white-collar workers, he said.
In addition to NTU, other schools in central and southern Taiwan, including National Cheng Kung University, National Sun Yat-sen University and Cheng Shiu University, are to join the project for talent cultivation and technique localization, center president Lin Chiu-feng (林秋豐) said.
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