Page 8 - AsiaElec week 23

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Green Investment Group starts offshore wind development in South Korea
SOUTH KOREA
MACQUARIE’S Green Investment Group (GIG) has begun data collection work at the site of what is set to be a 1,400-MW oating wind project o the city of Ulsan in South Korea.
GIG, which has nanced 4.5 GW of o shore capacity worldwide, has installed a LiDAR, a wind resource assessment device, which will col- lect data to determine the suitability of the site.
While oating LiDAR systems are commonly used across Europe and other advanced o shore wind markets, this is rst time it has been used in South Korea, which is still a frontier area in terms of o shore wind.
“( is is) a signi cant milestone in the devel- opment of our project and Korea’s burgeoning o shore wind market. With its access to steel, ships, o shore plant expertise and port logistics, Ulsan city is perfectly positioned to deliver a fantastico shorewindfarm,”saidGIGassociate director Woojin Choi.
This is the first step in Seoul’s mammoth 1,400-MW plans for the o shore site in to catch up with neighbouring Japan and Taiwan in the o shore wind market.
South Korea’s Renewable Energy 2030 Imple- mentation Plan speci cally calls for the devel- opment of 12,000 MW of o shore wind power capacity from virtually zero at present.
Seoul wants to generate 20% of South Korea’s power from renewables by 2030, up from 7.6% in 2017. By 2030, the country should have 49,000
MW of renewable capacity in operation.
e Ulsan project is being progressed in three separate phases. Development of the rst 400
MW phase is targeted for completion in 2022. GIG has also recently signed an MoU with Energy Infra Asset Management, a South Korean renewable energy fund manager, to fund
the Ulsan o shore wind project.
As well as GIG, other investors in the var-
ious projects that make up the 1,400-MW development zone include: Royal Dutch Shell; Swedish-South Korean group CoensHexicon; South Korea’s SK E&S; Denmark’s Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and South Korea’s Korea Floating Wind (KFWind).
Macquarie subsidiary Macquarie Capital Korea arm has been exploring other opportuni- ties in south Korea. In 2018 it signed a memoran- dumofunderstanding(MoU)withGyeongbuk Floating O shore Wind Power to explore devel- oping a oating o shore wind project in the country.
In January, Norway’s Equinor signed an MoU with Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) to explore opportunities for developing commer- cial oating o shore wind capacity.
Even before the Equinor deal, KNOC had laid out plans to develop 200 MW of oating o - shore wind power capacity at its Donghae plat- form 58 km o the coastal city of Ulsan, close the GIG’s project.™
World Bank to lend $300m to China for battery storage expansion
CHINA
THE World Bank is to lend $300 million to China to expand the use of battery technology as part of the bank’s global $1 billion commitment to energy storage.
e cash will co- nance China’s Renewable Energy and Battery Storage Promotion Project, which will be implemented by Hua Xia Bank, a publicly listed commercial bank in China.
Hua Xia Bank is to provide $450 million to fund the expansion of battery technology in China in a bid to reduce coal’s dominance of power generation.
Beijing wants to bridge the gap between China’s expanding renewable and coal power projects in the west of the country and the large
demand centres on the east coast.
e country is unable to utilise its generat-
ing resources fully because of technical con- straints in the transmission networks and gaps in the regulatory framework for electricity trade between provinces.
is has created the phenomenon of stranded capacity, where wind farms cannot connect their output to customers through transmission grids or even local mini-grid projects.
Battery storage can reduce these power losses while driving forward renewable technology and supporting China’s energy transition goals.
Beijing aims to increase the share of non-fos- sil fuels in the primary energy consumption
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 23 13•June•2019