French offshore vessels and services firm Bourbon has completed the mooring installation of the first floating wind turbine in France for Ecole Centrale de Nantes (ECN) as part of the European project FLOATGEN at the SEM-REV experimental test site, off Le Croisic.
FLOATGEN is a wind turbine with concrete float designed by Ideol and currently under construction at Saint-Nazaire port by Bouygues Travaux Publics. Its installation is scheduled for the end of 2017 on the SEM-REV site.
The innovative mooring system using synthetic mooring lines was designed and developed by the Ideol team. An anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessel with a WROV wase required for its installation conditioned by high tensions.
“One of the FLOATGEN project challenges was to install an innovative mooring system that needs to meet the production conditions criteria of the floating wind turbine. This demonstrates the value of an experimental site to test innovative technological developments, their implementation and project management when in production. Competent and dedicated teams from BOURBON, Ideol and Centrale Nantes have highly contributed to the success of the operation”, adds Christian Berhault, Head of SEM-REV at Centrale Nantes.