Government promotes the localization of offshore wind energy to deliver good results again! The signing ceremony of the Taiwan Offshore Wind Project Certification Alliance (TOWPCA) was held at the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection of MOEA (hereinafter referred to as BSMI) on July 15, 2020. BSMI facilitated the signing between the international offshore wind project certification body DNV-GL and the Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC), the Ship and Ocean Industries R&D Center (SOIC), CR Classification Society (CR), and Taiwan Electric Research & Testing Center (TERTEC). The future alliance members will work together to provide third-party project certification services for offshore wind farm developers.
In recent years, the government has actively promoted energy transformation and the development of renewable energy. The MOEA has set a development goal of increasing the proportion of renewable energy generation to 20% by 2025. Currently, it is proactively promoting photovoltaic and offshore wind energy development projects. It is estimated that by 2025, the installed capacity will reach 20GW for solar power and 5.7GW for offshore wind respectively.
In 2017, the Executive Yuan instructed BSMI to promote the Renewable Energy Financing Third-Party Testing and Certification Center Project to establish third-party certification technology to ensure the safety and reliability of offshore wind farms in Taiwan. BSMI organized a third-party certification technology team based on the professional capabilities of each institute to carry out research on third-party certification technology, and facilitated the technical cooperation between the certification team and international certification bodies to transfer the project certification technology through training courses and practical operations.
With the promotion of BSMI, the team has achieved preliminary results in the research of the project's certification technology after more than 3 years of hard work. A local team composed of the MIRDC, CR Classification Society, SOIC, and TERTEC has partnered with DNV GL, an internationally renowned project certification institution, to form the TOWPCA. The alliance held an alliance signing ceremony at BSMI today (the 15th). The alliance members will work together to provide third-party project verification services for offshore wind farm development.
The signing ceremony was witnessed by BSMI Deputy Director-General Ms. Ling-Huei Chen. Deputy Director-General Ms. Chen stated that the members of the alliance have discussed various issues such as personnel training, division of labor by field, and cooperation mechanisms for more than a year, and reached a consensus on alliance cooperation. "In the future, under the leadership of DNV GL's vast international experience, the alliance will be able to strengthen the third-party project certification capabilities of local institutes". On September 23, 2019, BSMI announced the "Offshore Wind Farm Project Certification Review and Demonstration Counseling Guidelines" and has already implemented the first stage. The design basis and design stage will be the main scope of review for integrating offshore wind farm projects into the grid before 2022. The second phase is scheduled to be introduced before December this year (2020). The plan for managing the offshore wind farms that have been integrated into the grid after 2022 includes the manufacturing, transportation, and installation stages, which will require third-party certification. Due to the broadened scope of the review requirements, wind farm developers would need to spend more time and prepare more resources. The establishment of the local team will help ease some of these pressures.
In his speech, Per Enggaard Haahr, General Manager APAC of DNV GL, said that the cooperation between DNV GL and important research organizations in Taiwan will help to localize the certification technology of offshore wind farm projects. Per Enggaard Haahr indicated that "after the alliance starts operating, DNV GL will continue to introduce international offshore wind farm project certification standards and experience, re-enhance Taiwan's local offshore wind farm project certification capabilities, and provide international standard certification services for wind farm developers.”
Dr. Chia-Min Wei, vice president of MIRDC pointed out that MIRDC began to assist the government in promoting the terrestrial wind farm industry in 2005 and established the first, in the Asia-Pacific region, nationally certified Cigu Small Wind Turbine Test Site at Cigu Tainan in 2011. In addition to Cigu, there are large-scale wind turbine testing laboratories in the Port of Taichung, all of which have passed the domestic TAF ISO 17025 laboratory certification, and have been respectively recognized by international certification bodies to establish solid testing technology and data analysis capabilities. DNV-GL's project certification experience combined with the case work by local institutes will be able to form a national team with international project certification capabilities! From a professional and neutral third-party perspective, MIRDC has guided offshore wind farm developers to pass the certification reviews conducted by BSMI, accelerating talent cultivation and experience building for the TOWPCA.