France’s First Commercial Offshore Wind Turbine Stands

France is currently one blade short of having its first commercial offshore wind turbine as the team on board the vessel Vole au vent is completing the installation of the first GE Haliade 150-6MW unit at the Saint-Nazaire offshore wind farm site.

Jan De Nul’s jack-up vessel sailed out of the Nantes-Saint Nazaire Port last week, loaded with the first four sets of offshore wind turbines for the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in France, being built between 12 and 20 kilometres off the coast of the Guérande peninsula.

Also known as Parc éolien en mer du Banc de Guérande, the offshore wind farm will feature 80 GE Haliade 150-6 MW turbines, all transported and installed out of GE’s logistics hub at the Nantes Saint-Nazaire Port.

According to a recently issued construction update, 60 monopile foundations and 22 inter-array cables were installed at the wind farm by the end of March, with the construction teams returning at the wind farm to install the remaining foundations and inter-array cables.

DEME Offshore’s jack-up vessel Innovation will install the remaining 20 foundations in the coming months, while the remaining 58 inter-array cables are being installed by Louis Dreyfus TravOcean using the vessel Olympic Triton.

The 480 MW 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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