To help extend the scope of Taiwan’s offshore wind energy components manufacturing to the spare parts value chain, MIRDC held the “the Offshore Wind Turbine and Structural Component O&M International Cooperative Meeting” on July 29th at NTUH International Convention Center, which attracted over 100 domestic and international industrial participants. The conference promoted cooperation opportunities and sharing of experiences among the manufacturers and received good responses.

In the conference, Lucas Lin, CEO of SWancor Renewable Energy, was invited to talk about their practical O&M experience in Formosa 1 demo offshore wind farm in 2019 and the localization opportunities. In terms of wind turbine, Service Operations Manager Dennis Damgaard of the wind turbine system supplier Siemens Gamesa, shared Taiwan’s offshore wind turbine O&M strategies, showing the future development trend to expectant local manufacturers. Ms. Chiu-Wen Chen, President of CSBC Coating Solutions, which has won Sing Da Marine Structure’s underwater foundation anti-corrosion contract for Ørsted’s Greater Changhua wind farm in 2020, talked about offshore wind energy structures, focusing on corrosion prevention technology for the structures and the localization planning. Mr. Chung-Min Wu, manager of the paint supplier Berlin Co., Ltd. talked on the paints used for the structures and shared the development experience during the localization process.

MIRDC assisted the government in integrating the developers, international wind turbine system suppliers, operators in local and overseas supply chains to jointly promote localization of offshore wind energy industry. Elements of the local supply chain including the tower, underwater foundation, electrical facilities, etc. have been established. As the first demo offshore wind farm has commercialized in 2019, a number of new wind farms have started construction in 2020, including Taiwan Power’s Phase 1 wind farm, Formosa 2’s wind farm, and Yunneng’s wind farm. As the related operation and maintenance work is going to commence, considerable O&M business opportunities will be generated in the next 20 years. In the future, the wind energy industry will extend the localization of manufacturing to that of O&M. Parties interested in joining the offshore wind farm operation and maintenance are assisted to grasp the market trend, as well as understand the O&M technologies for offshore wind energy and the spare part items that can be locally purchased. Moreover, the substantial cooperation between local and overseas operators can be promoted.