The renewables team of international marine and engineering consultant LOC Group will provide comprehensive marine warranty surveying (MWS) services for the first offshore wind farms in French territorial waters. The work is for three individual offshore sites: the 498-MW Fécamp, the 450-MW Courseulles-sur-Mer, and the 480-MW Saint-Nazaire wind farms.
Development of the three sites was awarded to a consortium led by EDF Énergies Nouvelles and Enbridge. LOC Group has been working with the consortium to offer early-stage guidance on the design work and ensure the safety and security of the construction process.
With the French government actively looking to grow the country’s offshore wind industry, it is keen to appoint companies in the industrial and maritime sectors with a local base. LOC’s Paris-based renewables team consists of highly skilled, bilingual professionals.
The LOC team is working closely with EDF Énergies Nouvelles to advise on the transportation and installation of the individual turbines, and ensure all procedures meet the standards required by the marine warranty surveyor.
As part of its MWS offering, LOC has accounted for the varying environmental conditions and water depth at each site. In particular, initial drilling revealed different soil conditions, with Saint-Nazaire having a hard seabed, Courseulles-sur-Mer a softer one made up mainly of clay and limestone, and Fécamp’s being chalk-based. As a result, the 83 turbines at Fécamp will use gravity-based foundations, while the other two sites will use monopole foundations for the turbines.
“France intends to install 6 GW worth of wind farms by 2020, and is taking a leading role in developing opportunities in floating offshore wind,” said R.V. Ahilan, group director of Renewables Advisory & Energy Technology at LOC. “In this market, the offshore engineers of the LOC Paris team are well placed to take a lead role in the industry’s development in France.”
Source: LOC
For more information, go to www.loc-group.com
