Wind power plans for Taiwan-held islets near China

Taiwan's Penghu group of islands plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to expand their wind power capacities, an official said Wednesday.

Offshore Penghu County has set aside more than 10 billion Taiwan dollars (312 million US) for wind turbines and other hardware, the development bureau official told AFP.

The county government will set up an energy company next year in a bid to boost its wind power output to 125 megawatts by 2020 from the current 10 megawatts, he said.

Several foreign and local companies, including Germany-based Enercon, the world's third-largest wind turbine maker, have expressed an interest in the project, said the official who declined to be named.

Wind power currently supplies 20 percent of the energy needs in Penghu, an archipelago near the mainland in the Taiwan Strait that is a leader in Taiwan's wind power development, he said.

The new company could transmit electricity to Taiwan proper when an undersea cable connecting Penghu with Yunlin county in central Taiwan is finished in 2014, he added.

Taiwan, which imports nearly all of its energy needs, is keen to explore alternative energy sources, including hydraulic, wind and solar power.

Parliament last year passed a major renewable energy bill aimed at adding between 6,500 and 10,000 megawatts of installed energy from renewable sources over the next 20 years.

(c) 2010 AFP