Sapura Energy Berhad has installed the first of the 80 monopiles at the 640 MW Yunlin wind farm offshore Taiwan.
The installation of the first monopile marks the official start of the project’s offshore construction phase.
The contract to transport and install the wind turbine foundations at Yunlin is the Malaysian oil and gas specialist’s first venture into offshore wind.
The wind farm’s monopiles were manufactured by Steelwind Nordenham and Formosa Heavy Industries (FHI) Corporation. Steelwind also supplied 120 segments for the 40 monopiles manufactured by FHI.
The transition pieces were produced by Smulders and Taiwan’s CTCI Machinery Corporation .
Located in the Taiwan Strait some eight kilometres west of the coast of Yunlin County, the Yunlin wind farm will comprise 80 Siemens Gamesa 8 MW wind turbines scheduled to be commissioned by the end of 2021.
Yunlin is owned by wpd (48 per cent), EGCO Group (25 per cent), and a Sojitz Corp-led consortium (27 per cent) which also includes Chugoku Electric Power, Chudenko Corporation, Shikoku Electric Power, and JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation.