After more than two years of negotiations with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the 300 megawatt (MW) Hailong Offshore Wind 2A (海龍離岸風電) farm off the coast of Changhua County has finally come up with a plan that meets the ministry’s local content requirements.
Hailong’s developer Northland Power Inc, wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA and ministry departments have had numerous meetings to figure out if and how the local supply chain can provide the 27 items that must be made locally for wind farms to qualify for the government’s higher feed-in-tariff rate.
Hailong has another 744MW of capacity it won in an auction that would not receive the favorable feed-in-tariff rate and is not subject to the localization requirements.
Photo: Lin Jing-hua, Taipei Times
“This has been a long journey, but we’ve been finally able to come to a consensus and it feels good to be finally able to start the project,” said Felipe Montero, head of Northland Power Taiwan and project director of Hailong Offshore Wind.
“Hailong looks forward to delivering on our localization commitments one by one,” the company said in a news release yesterday. “This will be an ‘anchor project’ that pushes forward the development of Taiwan into an export hub for the wind energy supply chain for the [Asia-Pacific] region.”
Hailong plans to work with partners Siemens Gamesa and CSBC-DEME Wind Engineering Co Ltd (台船環海風電) on the project.
“Hailong’s collaboration with CSBC-DEME was instrumental in bringing about Taiwan’s first domestic crane vessel, the Green Jade,” the release said. “With the ability to lift 4,000 [tonnes] using the latest DP3 [Dynamic Positioning 3] systems, the Green Jade will be finished by 2022 and start its service with the Hailong project.”
Hailong plans to use Siemens-Gamesa’s latest SG 14-222 DD 14MW turbines, and at 247m, they are one of the tallest turbines on the market, the release said.
The turbine “would be produced at Siemens-Gamesa’s nacelle assembly plant in Taichung harbor,” it said, adding that, apart from providing for domestic needs, Taichung would also become a regional export center.
Taiwan’s localization policy has been resisted by developers, who are mostly European.
They have said that the practice leads to cost overruns and there are not enough local suppliers that meet the exacting standards for making offshore wind turbine components.
Earlier this month, Cristina Lobillo Borrero, director for energy policy strategy and coordination at the European Commission, asked whether Taiwan’s local content policy might be in contravention of WTO rules.
She also said that the policy is bad for Taiwan’s energy users.
“Excessively strict demands regarding local content requirements would lead to higher costs, which would eventually be absorbed by consumers,” Borrero said.
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
‘SACRED MOUNTAIN’: The chipmaker can form joint ventures abroad, except in China, but like other firms, it needs government approval for large investments Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) needs government permission for any overseas joint ventures (JVs), but there are no restrictions on making the most advanced chips overseas other than for China, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. US media have said that TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp, has been in talks for a stake in Intel Corp. Neither company has confirmed the talks, but US President Donald Trump has accused Taiwan of taking away the US’ semiconductor business and said he wants the industry back
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS