Power Flows from First French Commercial-Scale Offshore Wind Farm

The 480 MW Saint-Nazaire, France’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, has produced its first power for the French grid.

According to EDF Renouvelables’s latest update, 27 out of 80 GE Haliade 150-6 MW wind turbines have been installed by Jan De Nul’s jack-up vessel Vole au vent at the offshore wind farm’s construction site which is located some 20 kilometres off the coast of the Guérande peninsula, after the first turbine was installed in April 2022.

The French transmission system operator Réseau de Transport d’Electricité (RTE) is responsible for connecting the wind turbines to the national electricity grid and will continue to work until all 80 units are installed and fully commissioned by the end of this year.

At the end of May, all 80 foundations were installed using DEME Offshore’s installation vessel Innovation.

Louis Dreyfus Travocean (LDTVO), the company responsible for the supply and installation of inter-array cables at the France offshore wind farm, installed 20 out of the 80 inter-array cables on the rocky bottoms of the Guérande bank during the first installation campaign while the second campaign started in mid-March.

The cables will be protected by using Rockbags that will be provided by Belfast-headquartered Ridgeway.

The Saint-Nazaire offshore wind farm, scheduled to be commissioned this year, 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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