Siemens Gamesa has been confirmed as the turbine supplier for Taiwan's 640MW Yunlin offshore wind array, after developer Wpd reached a financial close on the project last week.

"We are extremely satisfied that the preferred supplier agreement we reached with Wpd offshore one year ago has materialized into a firm order. It is furthermore encouraging to be able to introduce the SG 8.0-167 DD in APAC with an order of this volume," said Andreas Nauen, chief executive of the Offshore business unit at Siemens Gamesa.

"There is an increasing number of such sizeable opportunities in the region, and we are looking forward to contributing further to the growth of offshore wind in this part of the world."

A group of 19 banks – four of them Taiwanese – and export credit agencies from Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark were involved in wrapping up the €2.7bn ($3bn) project financing for Yunlin, Wpd had said last week.

The German developer was in April joined by a consortium of Japanese investors led by conglomerate Sojitz Corporation, which took a 27% share.

The wind farm is slated to enter service in December 2021 eight kilometres off the southwest coast of Taiwan.

Wpd chief operating officer Achim Berge Olsen: “By achieving this important step we now can concentrate on the realisation of the project.

“We are looking forward to the cooperation with our partners and of course we are aware of the special responsibility being the first large offshore wind project with local supply chain in Taiwan.”

The project will feature localised towers in 2021, via CS Wind and Chin Fong Machine Industrial’s partnership in Taichung harbour, thereby satisfying official localisation requirements on turbine components.

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Siemens Gamesa confirmed for Taiwan offshore wind farm