Wind Energy

Enercon-70 wind turbine No. 100 installed in Taiwan

All the ENERCON WECs on Taiwan are wind class I. They are designed for a surviving wind speed of 70 m/s and an annual average wind speed of 10 m/s. And this is needed. During the windy winter season it is not unusual to see the WECs producing at rated power day in and day out.

In the installation season during summer, the assembly sometimes has to be stopped for several days, while typhoons with wind speed above 60 m/s are passing. This also happened during installation of turbine number 100 in summer last year. “Normally, such typhoons have no influence on the work in progress other than the missed days,” explains Jørn Kristensen, ENERCON Sales Manager for East Asia.

The reason is that the WECs and materials on the ground as well as in the harbour are extraordinarily secured and lashed to the ground. But a strong typhoon last August was extremely wet and gave an excessive amount of rain, Kristensen reports. “This caused a lot of flooding, and several people were killed in the mountains and the rivers. Even large highway bridges were washed away and prevented the transportation of towers to the sites for several weeks.”

ENERCON installed the first WECs in Taiwan in 1991/1992. These were four E-40/600 kW WECs supplied to the state owned power company Taiwan Power Company (TPC) and installed on Penghu Island. Later, this wind farm was extended with additional four 600 kW wind turbinesmachines.

Both wind power projects were done in close cooperation with Chung-Hsin Electric & Machinery Mfg. Corp. (CHEM). Together, CHEM and ENERCON also won contracts for six wind turbines E-44/900 kW and twelve E-70/2.3 MW wind turbines to be supplied to TPC this year. The E-44 are presently under construction on Penghu Island, and the E-70 on the west coast of the main island: two at the Datan Power station and ten at Wang-Kong south of Taichung.

In 2005, ENERCON installed the first project of E-70 for an Independent Power Producer (IPP) – a 25 turbine project developed by InfraVest Wind Power Group, an affiliate of a German developer of the same name. This turned out to be the first in a number of projects for this developer. E-70 number 100 is included in the 5th InfraVest project.

In addition, during 2009 ENERCON installed an 11.5 MW wind farm for Lung-Kang Wind Power Corporation on the west coast. The wind energy project consists of 5 E-70/2.3 MW wind turbines and is developed and owned by the large industrial group Tung-Ho Steel Enterprise Corp.

All the time and for all projects, ENERCON has cooperated with Giant, Taipei, for inland transportation and cranes for the installation. Quite a significant part of special equipment is requested for transportation, and Giant made this investment from the start of the first project. Foundation sections and towers are purchased locally from large steel manufacturing companies.

This has involved an important transfer of quality assurance requirements and paint systems for the towers. Until now, the towers have been manufactured and supplied by China Steel Machinery Corporation (CSMC). “Also for the years to come, ENERCON is expected to be one of the leading suppliers to the Taiwanese wind energy market.

The government has a policy to install wind energy. The players in the market are power company TPC and a number of developers like InfraVest and Tung-ho for IPP,” Kristensen states.

www.enercon.de