France to See Its First Commercial Offshore Wind Turbines Installed in April

The installation of wind turbines at the 480 MW Saint-Nazaire, France’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, is set to start in April.

”All the teams, at sea and on land, are mobilized to load the towers, nacelles and blades which will allow the installation of the first wind turbines at sea from April. As a reminder, the objective is for the wind farm to be fully commissioned by the end of 2022,” Parc Eolien en Mer de Saint-Nazaire, the wind farm’s developer, said.

Saint-Nazaire, also known as Parc éolien en mer du Banc de Guérande, will feature 80 GE Haliade 150-6MW turbines loaded out from GE’s logistics hub at the Nantes Saint-Nazaire Port, and transported and installed on monopile foundations between 12 and 20 kilometres off the coast of the Guérande peninsula.

The wind turbines will be transported and installed by Jan De Nul’s jack-up Vole au vent. According to AIS data, Vole au vent reached Saint-Nazaire on Thursday, 31 March.

60 monopile foundations and 22 inter-array cables have so far been installed at the wind farm, and the construction teams have now returned to install the remaining hardware.

DEME Offshore’s jack-up vessel Innovation will install the remaining 20 foundations in the coming months.

73 of the wind farm’s XL monopiles have to be drilled through the calcarenite rock, an industry first, according to DEME.

Louis Dreyfus TravOcean has now returned to the site to install the remaining 58 inter-array cables.

The Olympic Triton is at the site and is expected to complete the project by November, the wind farm’s developer said.

Saint-Nazaire is owned and developed by Eolien Maritime France (EMF), a consortium of EDF Renouvelables, Enbridge, and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

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