Yunneng Wind Power's Yunlin wind farm project off the west coast of Taiwan has suffered a setback after a monopile was reportedly lost during the recently restarted installation works.
Citing sources close to the matter, a local offshore wind industry news website Unredacted, which broke the news, said this week that Yunneng has suspended monopile installation after a 'pile slip incident," where the monopile slipped "into very soft sea bed soil." Read the full account here.
Yunneng is a subsidiary of wpd offshore GmbH. The offshore wind farm project is owned by wpd (25 percent), TotalEnergies (23 percent), EGCO Group (25 percent), and a Sojitz Corp-led consortium (27 percent) which also includes Chugoku Electric Power, Chudenko Corporation, Shikoku Electric Power, and ENEOS.
Yunneng said in late April that works on the construction of the Yunlin offshore wind farm had resumed following the winter break, and with new monopile installation contractors, UAE's NPCC, which brought the heavy lift vessel DLS 4200, and Norway's Havfram, to provide additional Project Management and Owners Engineer Services within the foundation (monopile) installation package. Read More Here.
To remind, the previous monopile installation contractor, Malaysian company Sapura Energy in February issued a termination notice to Yunneng Wind Power in relation to a contract for the transportation and installation of monopiles at the Yunlin offshore wind farm in Taiwan, over an alleged breach of contract.
Sapura Energy installed the first monopile at the Yunlin project in October 2020.
Back in August 2021, Yunneng Wind Power said foundation installation for the Yunlin Offshore Wind Farm was "scheduled to be finalized in the year 2021," and that the Yunlin Offshore Wind Farm was expected to be fully installed and commissioned by the first quarter of 2022.
This deadline has obviously been broken, and the new expected completion date has not been disclosed.
Inaccurate subsea soil data?
Worth noting, Unredacted, which broke the news on the recent monopile incident, has also pointed to a February 2022 report by AmInvest, which provided background on the potential reasons behind the Sapura contract termination.
The AmInvest report says: "The Yunlin project was earlier scheduled for completion over 16 months by September 2020. However, this was delayed due to technical difficulties from inaccurate subsea soil data provided by the client Yunneng, as asserted by Sapura. Hence, job execution was hampered, work safety compromised and costs rose substantially above expectations. Currently [as at February 2022], the work progress work has only reached 36.9% to date. The termination stems from the breakdown of negotiations after Yunneng attempted to enforce contractual claims against Sapura despite changes in conditions."
Probe underway
Offshore Engineer has reached out to Yunneng, Havfram, and wpd offshore, seeking more info on the reported monopile incident, and the plans going forward.
"Regarding your request, we would clarify that Havfram only act in a limited capacity as owners engineer. Overall Project Management is provided by WPD and all contact with media should be directed to WPD as the single point of contact," Havfram said.
wpd replied:"We only can confirm that an incident occurred during the [monopile] installation. The investigation into this is currently underway. We will await the results of these investigations before commenting on this. Yunneng eventually replied, but the spokesperson said, "we don’t have further comment on it as the investigation is still ongoing."
Monopiles
As for the monopiles being installed, Steelwind Nordenham secured the monopile fabrication order in 2019.
The company said at the time that these would be installed at the Yunlin wind farm where the water depth reaches from 8,5 meters up to 38 meters.
"Several monopiles „beyond XXL“ have at the lower end not only the biggest diameter of the world (10 m), but also show another record due to their weight: due to the soil conditions the monopiles have to be very long (60 up to 98 m) and will be very heavy – with a maximum single unit weight of close to 2.000 t - they are actually the [heaviest monopiles in the world], the manufacturer said at the time.
While the timing of the resumption of monopile installation works remains unclear, once completed, the Yunlin offshore wind project will have 80 turbines of 8 MW each and a total capacity of 640 megawatts.
This will produce 2.4 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, which is enough to cover the electricity needs of 605,000 households.