Taiwan Finalises 15 GW Offshore Wind Allocation Plan for 2026-2035

Upper bidding price limit for the first phase set at TWD 2.49/kWh (approx. EUR 0.076/kWh).

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs has now officially announced the offshore wind allocation plan for the ten-year period between 2026 and 2035, during which a total of 15 GW of new capacity will be added.

While the draft regulation for Taiwan’s 3rd round of offshore wind auctions was in discussion, it was reported that 1.5 GW of offshore wind capacity would be added each year from 2026 until 2035, instead of previously planned 1 GW – adding 15 GW instead of the initially proposed 10 GW during that period.

Of this, a total of 9 GW of offshore wind was proposed to be added until 2031, with further 6 GW of capacity planned to be hooked to the grid from 2032 to 2035.

The official announcement now published by the Ministry is in line with this, but the government now also said that the first, 9 GW stage would be added in three phases from 2026 to 2031.

As for the allocation of the 6 GW of offshore wind capacity in the second stage, for the period from 2032 to 2035, it will refer to the results of the first stage selection, also taking into account international technological development and other relevant information to plan the details of the tender.

Those applying to participate in the tenders will first go through a “performance ability review”, with only those selected after the review eligible to participate in a competitive tender. The capacity will be allocated to winning parties based on the bid price and the wind farm connection date.

To qualify for the auction, projects must have agreement to the site (including nine opinion letters), preliminary approval of the Environmental Impact Assessment (conditional), and Taipower Grid Feasibility.

The capacity to be allocated for a single offshore wind farm and to a single developer is set at 500 MW, plus additional 100 MW of capacity, depending on conditions such as wind farm integrity, development benefits, domestic industrial capacity, and grid-connection capacity.

The upper limit of the bid price for the first phase of the development is TWD 2.49/kWh (approximately EUR 0.076/kWh) and the lower limit is TWD 0/kWh. For the subsequent development periods, the average of all the winning bid prices in the previous period will be used as the upper limit of the price, while the lower limit of TWD 0 will be maintained.

According to information available earlier, auctions for offshore wind farms with commercial operation dates in 2026 / 2027 are planned to be held in 2022, with the first bidding round planned for June 2022.

For offshore wind farms that would start operating in 2028 / 2029, Taiwan would launch bidding in 2023 and for projects that would enter operation in 2030 / 2031 an auction would be held the following year.

Auction timeline for offshore wind farms that would be up and running from 2032 to 2035 would be decided later. 

Taiwan has so far allocated 5.5 GW of capacity through the first two offshore wind auctions held in April and June 2018. The projects awarded capacity then are scheduled to be up and running by 2025.