Giant turbine foundation lost at sea as new setback hits major Taiwan offshore wind project

The 640MW Yunlin offshore wind project being developed off Taiwan by German developer Wpd could face further delays after a monopile foundation fell into the sea in the second such incident to hit the development.

“We will await the results of these investigations before commenting on this,” a spokesperson for the developer said. Local reports suggested installation work has been suspended following the incident.

Yunlin is co-owned by lead developer Wpd, which holds 25%, Thailand’s Electricity Generating Public Company (EGCO) with another 25%, French oil & gas supermajor TotalEnergies holding 23% and a Japanese consortium of investors retaining with the remaining 27%.

Sources said the installation was being carried out by Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC), brought in following the exit of Malaysia’s Sapura Energy earlier this year.

One source said that NPCC’s offshore vessel DLS-4200 was completing the work. NPCC has yet to respond to request for comment on the incident.

Some of Yunlin’s monopiles are 98 metres long and weigh close to 2,000 tonnes, making them among the largest in the world.

It is the second time a monopile has been lost at Yunlin. Sapura installed 16 of the planned 80 monopiles but lost one last year.

Sources said the chances of the latest monopile being recovered from the seabed are very slim, and that challenging soil conditions have led to the foundations slipping.

Earlier this year, Sapura Energy cancelled a key transportation and installation contract from 2019 for Yunlin.

Sapura said the project “was initially expected to be completed in September 2020, but completion was delayed to September 2023 following unresolved technical and operational issues not attributable to Sapura Energy”.

“These changes significantly altered the basis of the contract,” it noted.