Dutch offshore installation firm Van Oord said Friday it had installed all 62 jacket foundations at the Saint-Brieuc offshore wind farm in France.
The Saint-Brieuc offshore wind farm is being constructed in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, 16.3 kilometers off the coast of Brittany. It is the first wind farm in France with jacket foundations. Once operational, the 496 MW wind farm will generate enough electricity for 835,000 inhabitants.
Ailes Marines, owned by Iberdola, contracted Van Oord for the transport and installation of 62 jacket foundations for the wind turbines (3 pin piles each) and the 4 foundation pin piles for the offshore substation. Van Oord deployed its offshore installation vessel Aeolus to install the 190-pin piles and teamed up with other industry partners to install the jackets.
"Conditions for building a wind farm in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc have been challenging. The extremely hard and rocky seabed and Atlantic environmental conditions challenged our equipment and expertise. The Aeolus was therefore upgraded and an extensive spread of project-specific installation equipment was engineered, constructed, and utilized on the installation vessel," Van Oord explained.
To ensure that the Aeolus could be safely jacked above sea level, the feet of the jacking system were modified with a flex-pin construction. Due to the geotechnical conditions at the site, an innovative drilling method was used to install the foundations. Project-specific drills were jointly engineered and constructed with its partner Bauer Spezial Tiefbau, and a newly designed drilling template functioned as a positioning and casing drilling tool to ensure the precise placement of the pin piles.
The first wind turbine at the offshore wind farm was installed by Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy in May, and the first electricity from the wind farm was produced in July.
Credit: Van Oord
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