Siemens Gamesa has signed up Taiwan’s Yeong Guan group to supply castings for the 300MW of turbines the OEM is set to manufacture for the Hai Long 2 offshore wind project off the south-east Asian nation, its latest with a local fabricator in the fast-emerging market.
The deal, which follows on from inking of a preferred supplier agreement from joint-developers Canadian Northland Power and Taipei-headquartered Yushan Energy, clears the way for Yeong Guan and partner AH Industries to start building a factory at the new offshore wind hub being developed in Taichung port.
“Taking this new step in Taiwan together with our partners, YGG, and AH Industries … adds up very well with Siemens Gamesa’s own plan to localise nacelle assembly and with this supply agreement in place, we will be better prepared to meet the localization requirements on Hai Long,” said Niels Steenberg, Siemens Gamesa general manager for Asia-Pacific.
Yeong Guan group chairman Chang Hsien Ming said: “The Hai Long 2 project will deepen the existing collaboration between [us[ and [Siemens Gamesa] , and also create more cooperation opportunities in the future.”
The planned 200,000m2 factory, which will fabricate hub and base frame castings, will neighbour Siemens Gamesa’s to-be-built nacelle assembly facility in the Taichung industrial complex. Start-up is slated for 2023.
The deal builds on a long-standing relationship between Siemens Gamesa, Yeong Guan and AH Industries, with a first memorandum of understanding to develop the port of Taichung for offshore wind signed by the OEM and Yeong Guan in 2018, and a second this year that brought in AH Industries for machining for large steel componentry.
Siemens Gamesa has signed agreement with others in the Taiwanese supply chain, including Swancor, for blade manufacturing products, and CS Wind, which is fabricating offshore towers with Chin Fong.
Taiwan has high ambitions for offshore wind in its energy mix, with the country’s government this week (12 Oct) doubling its previous stated plans for the next stage of its offshore wind build-out with a goal to add 10GW of extra capacity from 2026 to 2035, taking capacity for wind at sea to 15.5GW in 2035.
Last year Taiwan held two rounds of offshore wind allocatio n to award seven companies a total 5.5GW capacity for its first stage of large-scale development between 2019-2025.
