France’s first floating turbine mooring installation

Bourbon carried out the engineering, operations preparation and execution of the installation for European project Floatgen. It used an Anchor Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) vessel with a WROV for the installation, conditioned by high tensions.

“The BOURBON team is extremely proud of this successful operation, which confirms once again our ability to deliver integrated projects, our expertise in offshore engineering services and our adaptability to demanding environments for the entire energy sector,” commented Patrick Belenfant, BOURBON’s senior vice president of Subsea Services.

Bourbon is responsible for the overall management of the project for engineering school Ecole Centrale de Nantes (ECN).

Currently under construction at Saint-Nazaire port by Bouygues Travaux Publics, Floatgen has a concrete float and synthetic mooring lines designed and developed by Ideol.

The wind turbine is due to be installed at the SEM-REV site at the end of 2017.

Christian Berhault, head of SEM-REV at Centrale Nantes, said: “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.”

By Rebecca Jeffrey