PHOTO: France Celebrates Floatgen, Deployment Preps Underway

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Photos: Courtesy of Matthieu Blandin

The Floatgen wind turbine is currently being prepared for deployment off Croisic at the École Centrale de Nantes SEM-REV demonstration site in France. This is both the first offshore and floating wind turbine to be installed off the French coast.

The 2MW Vestas turbine mounted on Ideol’s Damping Pool floating base will soon be towed to its location at the site and then connected to the electrical grid.

As announced this morning, Floatgen was christened today, 13 October, by Catherine Chabaud on the Darses Quay at Saint-Nazaire, a few dozen metres from where its floating base was built by Bouygues Travaux Publics.

The inauguration was attended by dignitaries including Sébastien Lecornu, Secretary of State to the Minister of State, the Minister for Ecological and Sustainable Transition, Bruno Retailleau, President of the Pays de la Loire region, David Samzun, the mayor of Saint-Nazaire and President of the CARENE (Saint-Nazaire Agglomeration Community), and Francis Bertolotti, chairman of the Nantes Saint-Nazaire Grand Port Maritime supervisory board.

Some 300 international stakeholders in the wind energy sector gathered for this event, having come from France as well as from Japan, Norway and Scotland, to celebrate this first for France and the starting point of this floating offshore wind turbine industrial sector.

An additional 400 students from local schools were invited to discover the turbine up close this afternoon.

Floatgen will be deployed for an initial period of two years, and the electricity produced will be sent directly to the electrical grid during that entire time.

Ideol’s teams are currently working on several floating wind projects around the world, including, aside from Floatgen, the next floating wind turbine demonstration in Japan, the installation of which is scheduled for 2018.