Formosa – offshore wind farms in Taiwan

Taiwan government set a goal to obtain 20% of electricity from renewables by 2025. To reach this goal, offshore wind development plays a critical role. The government hopes to install more than 1000 wind turbines by 2030.

Formosa 1 is the first wind farm situated 6 km off Miaoli county. It consists of two phases – Phase 1 installed two 4-MW turbines for demonstration, which started operation in April of 2017, and Phase 2 is under construction to install 30 more turbines. Wind turbines are installed on monopile foundations in water depths between 15 m and 30 m. The project has a 20-year power purchase agreement with Taiwan Power Company under feed-in tariff. As the time of writing, Swancor Renewable Energy, the company which holds 15% of the Formosa 1’s stake, sold 95% of its share to a New-York-based company, Stonepeak.

Formosa 2 is adjacent to Formosa 1. It lies approximately 3.8 km off shore in water depth of 55 m. It expects to install 47 8 MW turbines using jacket foundations and start its construction in 2020.

Note that the proposed number of turbines may change slightly when construction.

update on 1/20/2020: The second phase of Formosa 1 went live in December of 2019. The project has the total capacity of 128 MW.

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