Taiwan Selects 10 Offshore Wind Projects in Phase 1 Round 3 Auction

December 14, 2022, by Adrijana Buljan

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has selected ten offshore wind projects in the first auction of the Round 3 Zonal Development Phase.

The ten projects are proposed by: Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP); Corio Generation and JERA; Northland Power; Synera Renewable Energy (SRE; formerly known as Swancor Renewable Energy); Taiya Renewable Energy and EDF Renewables; and Skyborn Renewables (formerly known as wpd) and LeaLea Group.

According to the Ministry, some project sites are overlapping, so the final word on the selection will be made known by the end of the year.

Furthermore, in a press release from 14 December, the Ministry released the project list and stated that the table contains “order, project name, and planned grid connection year”. Whether the order means project are listed as preferred for development is unclear at this point.

The offshore wind projects are listed as follows:

CIP’s Taichung Fengmiao offshore wind farm
Corio and JERA’s Haiding 2 (one of the three joint venture’s Formosa 3 sites)
Corio and JERA’s Haiding 3 (one of the three joint venture’s Formosa 3 sites)
Northland Power’s CanWind (Cangeng) offshore wind farm
SRE’s Formosa 4 offshore wind farm
Taiya and EDF’s Huan-Yang offshore wind farm
Skyborn and LeaLea’s Haixia offshore wind farm
Northland Power’s NorthWind (Beineng) offshore wind farm
Skyborn’s Datian offshore wind farm
Skyborn’s Youde offshore wind farm

Most of the projects’ planned commissioning years are set to 2027, with the exception of Skyborn’s Haixia which is planned for commissioning in 2026 and Corio and JERA’s two projects which are due to be put into operation in 2026/2027.

Below, you can read more about the proposals. However, it is worth noting that the developers are being awarded 500 MW of capacity in this phase of Round 3 and might be awarded further capacity for the same projects in future auctions.

Developments on the List

As reported earlier this year in Offshore Energy – Offshore Wind premium issue, CIP’s Taichung Fengmiao offshore wind farm, planned for the waters off Taichung City, is being developed to have an installed capacity of 1,800 MW and to comprise turbines of between 9 MW and 20 MW of nominal capacity.

The Haiding 2 and Haiding 3 projects by Corio and JERA are two sites of the joint venture’s Formosa 3 development.

Formosa 3, located offshore the Changhua county off the central-western coast of Taiwan, comprises three separate sites with a total potential capacity of 2 GW, making it the largest offshore wind project under development in Taiwan

Northland Power’s CanWind (Cangeng) is a 1,204 MW project off Taichung City and NorthWind (Beineng) is a 602 MW wind farm offshore Changhua County.

The projects are expected to use wind turbines with a capacity of between 14 MW and 20 MW.

Formosa 4, being developed by Synera Renewable Energy (SRE) and also known as Miaoli 3, is planned to have a total installed capacity of 1,104 MW and to comprise wind turbines of a nominal output of between 9.5 MW and 20 MW.

The 440 MW Huan-Yang offshore wind project was developed by Taiya Renewable Energy and is proposed to be built offshore the coast of Changhua county. In August, EDF Renewables joined Taiya to bid in the auction.

For the 600 MW Haixia offshore wind farm, Skyborn Renewables (then wpd) teamed up with Taiwan Green Power (TGP), an offshore wind developer and part of Taiwan’s LeaLea Group, back in 2020. The project is located off the coast of Changhua County.

The two other projects on the list coming from Skyborne, Datian and Youde, are also located offshore Changhua County. Each wind farm is planned to have a 700 MW capacity and to feature turbines with an output of between 11 MW and 15 MW.

Ørsted, whose two new, 750 MW offshore wind farms in Changhua County, Xufeng-2 and Xufeng-3, passed the environmental review before the first Round 3 auction, decided not to bid in this phase.

On 30 September, the developer said it could not make the project investable at this time, due to “the current regulation” combined with “high inflation and increasing interest rates” led us to conclude, after exhausting all efforts, that we cannot make the projects investable at this stage”.

The Round 3 offshore wind tenders in Taiwan are procuring project development for wind farms scheduled to go online from 2026 to 2035, and the first phase of Round 3 auctions is organised for projects that will be put into operation in 2026/2027.