Atlantique Offshore Energy, in a consortium consortium with GE Grid Solutions and SDI (DEME Group) , has sent off the offshore substation for the 448 MW Calvados offshore wind project in France, also known as the Courseulles-sur-Mer offshore wind farm.
The offshore wind farm is being built by a consortium comprising EDF Renouvelables, Enbridge, CPP Investments | Investissements RPC and Skyborn Renewables.
For Atlantique Offshore Energy, a business unit of Chantiers de l’Atlantique focused on electrical offshore substations, GE Grid Solutions and SDI, this is the third substation delivered for an offshore wind farm developed by the same consortium.
Last year, the offshore substation for the 500 MW Fécamp wind farm off France was delivered and installed at the project site, after the substation for the 480 MW Saint-Nazaire project was installed in 2021 (this was the first offshore wind substation installed in the country).
Atlantique Offshore Energy and its partners secured the contracts to deliver electrical substations for the Fécamp and Courseulles-sur-Mer offshore wind farms in 2020.
The following year, the French company also signed a five-year preventive maintenance contract for the offshore substation being built for the Calvados offshore wind farm. This contract followed the same agreements signed for the offshore substations for the Saint-Nazaire and Fécamp wind farms.
Construction on the Calvados project kicked off in 2021, after the developers reached the financial close on the EUR 2 billion offshore wind farm in February of that year.
Located more than 10 kilometres from the Bessin coastline, the wind farm will comprise 64 Siemens Gamesa 7 MW wind turbines, ten of which will feature the RecyclableBlades .
Once fully commissioned in 2024, Calvados will generate the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption of 630,000 people, or over 90 per cent of the Calvados French department’s population.