France’s first wind farm to feature floating wind turbines

JULY 27, 2017—While the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and others in Europe have embraced offshore wind energy, France has not yet installed any turbines offshore. That will change this year, however, with FLOATGEN, an innovative project that will feature a wind farm of floating wind turbines 22 km off the coast of Le Croisic.

The construction of the first floating wind turbine got underway in Bouygues Travaux Publics in Saint Nazaire Port in early June.

Backed by a European consortium, FLOATGEN’s first full-scale demonstrator will begin turning this year. The floating wind turbine will use a ring-shaped floating foundation developed and patented by Ideol. The use of floating wind turbines will speed the project development since foundations will not have to be fabricated and set as is the case for fixed wind turbines. Instead, the floating wind turbines will be moored to the seabed.

Earlier this month, Bourbon completed the mooring installation of the first floating wind turbine for Ecole Centrale de Nantes (ECN) as part of the FLOATGEN at the SEM-REV experimental test site, off Le Croisic.

The innovative mooring system uses synthetic mooring lines designed and developed by Ideol team. Bourbon used an Anchor Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) vessel with a WROV for the installation.

The Bourbon team is extremely proud of this successful operation, which confirms once again our ability to deliver integrated projects, our expertise in offshore engineering services and our adaptability to demanding environments for the entire energy sector,” says Patrick Belenfant, Bourbon Corporation’s Senior Vice President Subsea Services.

“One of the FLOATGEN project challenges was to install an innovative mooring system that needs to meet the production conditions criteria of the floating wind turbine. This demonstrates the value of an experimental site to test innovative technological developments, their implementation and project management when in production. Competent and dedicated teams from Bourbon, Ideol and Centrale Nantes have highly contributed to the success of the operation,” adds Christian Berhault, Head of SEM-REV at Centrale Nantes.