France Receives First Offshore Wind Power

Floating offshore wind turbine Floatgen, the first offshore wind turbine installed off the French coast, has started delivering electricity to the grid.

The connection of the export cable and a final series of tests carried out in recent days enabled the Floatgen wind turbine, which is installed 22 kilometres off Le Croisic, to become fully operational on Tuesday, 18 September.

The Floatgen project is a joint venture between Ideol, Bouygues Travaux Publics, Centrale Nantes engineering school, RSK Group, Zabala, the University of Stuttgart, and Fraunhofer IWES.

The system consists of a Vestas V80 wind turbine mounted on a square ring-shaped floating foundation, known as the Damping Pool, developed and patented by Ideol and built by Bouygues Travaux Publics. A second unit of the Ideol foundation will soon be operational off Japan.

For Centrale Nantes, this is the first production tool and the first injection of electricity into its export cable at its SEM-REV test site dedicated to marine renewable energies.

The Floatgen turbine was assembled at the Port of Saint-Nazaire from where it was towed to the installation site in April.