Ørsted and Ta San Shang Marine Co. Ltd. sign charter contract

This charter contract signifies that Ørsted continues to invest significantly in the Taiwan market, both financially and by transferring its O&M expertise.

Scheduled for delivery in early 2022, the SOV will use the Port of Taichung as its base port, where Ørsted's future O&M facilities will be located, due to its proximity to the sites, water depths for accommodating deep draft vessels and navigational access. The SOV will be utilised to provide O&M services for the Greater Changhua offshore wind farms, which will be located 35 to 60 km off the Changhua coastline, Taiwan.

The SOV is the first to be built to fit the complicated and harsh environment in the Taiwan Strait. It will house up to 60 technicians plus the crew and will only need to return to shore once a month. The smaller crew transfer vessels (CTVs), also used to facilitate O&M activities, can only carry a maximum of 24 people and have to return to shore on a daily basis.

Safety is a guiding principle for Ørsted, and so the newly built SOV will be equipped with advanced technologies, such as a motion-compensated gangway to enable technicians to 'walk to work'. This will not only save time for technicians when travelling with and climbing onto the wind turbines from the CTV, it will also significantly improve their safety.

The SOV will also use a dynamic positioning system to automatically maintain its position and a 3D motion-compensated crane to mitigate wind induced motions on the loads to further ensure that technicians can carry out maintenance in a safe environment.

In addition, the vessel will have a design of environmentally improved capabilities. It will be prepared for fossil fuel-free operation and have an optimised hull design and a battery-hybrid setup to help reduce fuel consumption and decrease carbon footprint.

These high specifications, which are drawn from Ørsted's state-of-the-art SOV fleet deployed in Europe, well demonstrate the company's extensive and unparalleled expertise across the entire offshore wind industry value chain.

About Ørsted in Taiwan

• The Greater Changhua 1 & 2a offshore wind farms have a capacity of approximately 900 MW, enough to supply around 1 million Taiwanese households with green power. The construction of the offshore wind farms will be finalised between 2021 and 2022.
• In June 2018, Ørsted was awarded the right to build another 920 MW offshore wind in Taiwan through its Greater Changhua 2b & 4 sites. Changhua 2b & 4 are to be built in 2025, subject to Ørsted taking final investment decision on the projects in 2023.
• Ørsted is also the co-owner of Taiwan's first commercial-scale offshore wind project, Formosa 1, which was extended from a capacity of 8 MW to 128 MW in 2019.

Ørsted operates more than 1450 offshore wind turbines. Ørsted has installed approximately 6.8 GW offshore wind capacity and has a further 3 GW under construction, including Changhua 1 & 2a. In addition, Ørsted has secured the rights to build approximately 2.9 GW offshore wind in the US by 2024, approximately 1.1 GW in Germany by 2025, and approximately 0.9 GW in Taiwan by 2025. It is Ørsted's ambition to have installed a total of 15 GW offshore wind capacity world-wide by 2025.

Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/wind/17042020/rsted-and-ta-san-shang-marine-co-ltd-sign-vessel-contract/