Ørsted partners up with local classification society CR to endorse certification in Taiwan

With the signature of today’s contract, CR will be assigned to perform a crucial part of the structural review of the offshore substation design for the Greater Changhua projects. The partnership between CR and Ørsted marks a major step for offshore wind knowledge transfer in Taiwan. 

Ørsted has been working closely with CR for the past months to support knowledge transfer from Europe and its dedicated certification centre of competence to develop professional standards together with local certification institutions. CR will be granted access to Ørsted its European certification partner’s experience in state-of-the-art design review and also getting further insights into a world-class quality management and certification system.

Matthias Bausenwein, Ørsted’ General Manager for Asia Pacific, said “in the Taiwan strait we are dealing with unique conditions for building large-scale offshore wind farms, where the selected areas are affected by regular typhoons and earthquakes and other harsh site conditions. Even though it is early stage of developing local certification standards, we need and want to proactively collaborate with local partners to combine domestic and international experience.” 

Matthias Bausenwein added, “offshore wind is complex and requires experienced players with strong technical and financial capabilities like Ørsted. But while we can take certain early stage risks it is equally important to develop broader industry standards which support the ambitious and fast growth of offshore wind business in Taiwan in general and with a long-term view. Ørsted is therefore pleased to partner up with CR to bring in our knowledge. We hope that this first contract is just the beginning of a long-term cooperation.” 

Chao, Kuo-Liang, the Chairman of CR Classification Society, said that “CR has been devoting to establishing local certification capabilities of offshore wind farm for more than 5 years. Today we are honoured with great pleasure to sign this contract with Ørsted, the biggest wind farm developer in the world. Through the cooperation with the internationally prestigious certification society, DNV GL, in this project, we will be verifying the structure of offshore substation of the Greater Changhua projects to overcome the special environmental condition, such as typhoon and earthquake, in Taiwan. We look forward to optimizing our local certification capability to world-class standards through this cooperation, and hope this contract can be a solid foundation of our long-term cooperation with Ørsted.”

In this first stage, CR will work closely with Ørsted’s European partner DNV GL to conduct the structural review of the offshore substation design by end of 2018. Ørsted expects to work with CR in other certification scopes of the Greater Changhua projects as the projects further develop.

Greater Changhua projects are in the contracting process of NT$ 3 billion onshore substation EPC contract. Three Taiwanese companies are in the final stage to bid for the contract. Once Ørsted has secured the grid capacity and permits in the first half of this year, it will sign an EPC contact for the first onshore substation in the third quarter this year.

The Greater Changhua projects, located 35 to 60 kilometres off the coast, have a maximum capacity of 2.4GW to be built out from 2021 to 2025 and power 2.8 million Taiwanese homes. 

Global offshore wind leader Ørsted has over 25 years of development experience and installed more than 1,000 wind turbines offshore worldwide. Ørsted is the largest developer and operator of offshore wind farms, with more than 8GW in operation and under construction.