Iberdrola has started the transfer of the first offshore wind platforms for its Saint Brieuc wind farm, located in Brittany, France, from the Navantia Seanergies shipyard in Fene (A Coruña), where the Navantia-Windar consortium is building these structures to support the wind turbines.
These are the first four of a total of 62 platforms at the facility, which will be the Iberdrola group’s first major site for this technology in France. The contract for its construction was also the largest order to date for the Navantia and Windar partnership in offshore wind power.
The structures will be transported on a 122-meter-long barge belonging to the Van Oord company. The delivery of the first platforms demonstrates the successful completion of the contract signed two years ago, valued at 350 million euros. The order included the manufacture and assembly of the 62 structures at Navantia Windar’s facilities in Brest and Fene, as well as the piles that anchor the wind turbines to the seabed at Windar’s facilities in Avilés.
In addition, as a result of this contract, Navantia-Windar has opened a plant in Brest, France, where the 186 stabbings and intermediate platforms of the transition pieces have been manufactured, as well as the lattice structure for 34 of the 62 structures of the wind farm.
The Saint-Brieuc platforms stand on three legs. Each is up to 75-meters high, 25-meters wide and weighs 1,150 tons. Iberdrola has for the first time used an innovative hydraulic device called pile grippers to fix these structures, which provides additional fixation and stability during the installation phase, which is expected to begin in the coming months.
Saint-Brieuc will be the Iberdrola group’s first large offshore wind farm in France. With almost 500 MW of capacity, it will generate enough clean energy to meet the electricity consumption of 835,000 people, once it comes into operation in 2023. Located some 16 kilometers from the coast, it will cover an area of 75 square kilometers. Its construction involves an overall investment of around 2.5 billion euros.
The plant will become the company’s fourth offshore wind farm in operation, following West of Duddon Sands, located in the Irish Sea; Wikinger, in the Baltic Sea; and East Anglia ONE, one of the world’s largest offshore wind developments, located in the southern North Sea.
