Taiwan cuts solar and wind feed-in tariffs for 2020

The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) of Taiwan has lowered feed-in-tariff (FiT) rates for offshore wind power generation by 7.7% and PV power generation by 1.5-4.2% with effect from January 2020. Meanwhile, FiT rates for other renewable energy sources such as biomass, hydropower and waste will be raised by 1 to 4.3% in 2020, while that for geothermal power generation will remain at the same level.

For offshore wind projects, developers can either sign a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Taipower at TWD5.09/kWh (US$16.9c/kWh) or choose a segmented tariff at TWD5.80/kWh (US$19.3c/kWh) in the first 10 years of the project and TWD3.82/kWh (US$12.7c/kWh) for the remaining 10 years. Solar PV and geothermal rates are also separated into two periods. For the first period, solar PV FiT rates are set at TWD4.06-5.71/kWh (US$13.5-19c/kWh) for rooftop systems, TWD3.94/kWh (US$13.1c/kWh) for ground-mounted systems and TWD4.33/kWh (US$14.4c/kWh) for floating PV systems. Tariffs are slightly lower for the second period.

FiTs are available for electricity generated from onshore wind at TWD2.29-7.80/kWh (US$7.6-26c/kWh), for small hydropower (TWD2.86/kWh, i.e. US$9.8c/kWh), for biomass (TWD2.69-5.12/kWh, i.e. US$8.9c-17c/kWh) and for waste (TWD3.95/kWh, i.e. US$13c/kWh).

Taiwan recently presented plans to develop an additional 10 GW of offshore wind capacity between 2026 and 2035. The island already targets to build 5.7 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2025, as it aims to exit nuclear the same year. As of November 2019, Taiwan has only 0.9 GW of operational wind power capacity (including the new offshore wind project), but over 8 GW under development (mainly offshore wind).