More than 400 offshore wind turbines remained undamaged as Typhoon Danas swept across Taiwan yesterday, while electricity was restored to over 450,000 households affected by power outages, according to the Energy Administration and Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower).
Data from the Energy Administration showed that as of the end of May this year, more than 400 wind turbines had been installed in the Taiwan Strait, with 375 connected to the grid, bringing the total grid-connected capacity to over 3 GW.
Photo courtesy of Taipower
The agency said yesterday that it had previously instructed operators to regularly report the status of turbines and power generation conditions as part of safety protocols.
After confirming with the operators, no reports of wind turbine damage have been received so far, it noted after Typhoon Danas swept through western Taiwan earlier in the day.
In 2017, Taiwan and Japan jointly introduced a new typhoon-resistance standard requiring offshore wind turbines to meet Class T specifications, officials with the agency said.
Under this standard, turbines must be able to withstand an average wind speed of 57 meters per second over a 10-minute period — equivalent to a Beaufort scale 17 wind, or a typhoon — prosecutors said, noting that this requirement is stricter than Europe's Class 1A standard.
The turbines are designed to automatically shut down and lock their blades when wind speeds exceed 25 meters per second, preventing excessively rapid spinning which could lead to damage, the officials said.
On the other hand, Taipower said more than 650 electricity poles and three transmission towers collapsed as a result of the typhoon, leaving over 710,000 households without power at the peak of the storm.
As of 6pm yesterday, more than 450,000 households — over 60 percent of those affected — had their electricity restored, the company said.
The hardest-hit areas included Chiayi County and Chiayi City, which together saw more than 250,000 outages, and Tainan, where close to 190,000 households lost power, Taipower said.
Taipower said more than 4,000 personnel were mobilized for emergency repairs.
Typhoon Danas brought severe winds as it made landfall in Chiayi County's Budai Township late Sunday.
Gusts recorded at a manned station in Tainan reached 41.1 meters per second — the third-highest in the station's history — at 10.52pm on Sunday, according to the Central Weather Administration.
Estimates of agricultural losses in the typhoon have risen to at least NT$1.005 billion (US$31 million), the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday.
As of 5pm yesterday, crop damage had covered 9,067 hectares of farmland, or about 1.5 percent of Taiwan's arable land, with an average loss rate of 30 percent, equivalent to 2,750 hectares of total crop failure, it said.
The most affected crop was bananas, with 1,098 hectares damaged at a 35-percent loss rate, resulting in NT$130.22 million in losses.
Other severely impacted crops included pomelos, bamboo shoots, oranges and tangerines.
To help farmers recover from the storm damage, the ministry has activated emergency cash relief and low-interest loan programs for the hardest-hit areas of Tainan, Chiayi County and Chiayi City.
Crops severely affected are exempt from on-site inspections to expedite assistance, the ministry said, and farmers without planting records can use the ministry's disaster photo app to submit visual proof of damage.
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