Yunlin Offshore Wind Project Achieves Financial Close

June 3, 2019

German offshore wind developer wpd AG achieved financial close at the end of May for its Yunlin Offshore Wind project. The Yunlin Offshore Wind project is located eight kilometers off the Taiwanese west coast and has a 640MW capacity. 

The Yunlin Offshore Wind project is 73% owned by wpd and 27% owned by a Sojitz Corp-led consortium which includes Chugoku Electric Power Co. Inc., Chudenko Corporation, Shikoku Electric Power Co., Inc., and JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation.

A financing group comprising of a total of 19 banks and three export credit agencies from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands (EKF, Euler Hermes and Atradius respectively) closed the US$94bn project financing on the 30th of May. From the 19 banks involved in the financing group, four are Taiwanese banks and 15 are international banks. 

The Yunlin Offshore Wind project is the first large scale offshore wind project with a local supply chain in Taiwan and marks an important milestone in the renewable energy industry in Asia. 

 The Yunlin project will consist of 80 Siemens Gamesa turbines of the 8MW class. Project completion is scheduled in December 2021.

In addition to the Yunlin Offshore Wind project, wpd has also been awarded for the 350MW Guanyin offshore wind project which is planned for realisation in 2021. The Guanyin Offshore Wind project is located two kilometers off the Taoyuan County.

In late April of this year, both the Yunlin and Guanyin projects won grid-connection rights when the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs awarded a total of 3,836MW of grid connection capacity to eleven offshore wind farms proposed by seven different developers.