While candidate President Emmanuel Macron repeats that he wants to set up 50 wind farms at sea by 2050, a first mat came out of the sea on Tuesday.
France's first offshore wind turbine has indeed been installed in the offshore park of Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique) with a view to commissioning in early May.
The Saint-Nazaire offshore park, the very first in France to come into service, will eventually have 80 wind turbines, which will be gradually installed by the end of the year.
The mast of the first had been installed on Thursday on its foundation, laid at sea in September.
Two of the three blades were hung up immediately, but bad weather conditions delayed the installation of the last one, which should be added during the week.
"It's a lot of emotion and joy for the whole team, it's a project we've been working on for ten years," said Cédric Le Bousse, Director of Marine Renewable Energy France at EDF.
Off Le Pouliguen and Le Croisic, the 80 wind turbines will be spread between 12 and 20 km from the coast, over 78 km².
Each wind turbine has a power of six megawatts, "compared to three to four for an onshore wind turbine", specifies Cédric Le Bousse.
The equivalent of the consumption of 700,000 inhabitants
“The park, once installed, will produce the equivalent of the (electricity) consumption of 700,000 inhabitants, which represents half of the Loire-Atlantique.
That is 20% of the total consumption of the department,” explained Olivier de La Laurencie, project manager for the Saint-Nazaire wind farm.
Counting the base, the mast and the blades, the wind turbines culminate at about 180 m in height.
They are installed four by four thanks to a huge ship/platform planted on retractable "legs", which transports masts and blades from the port of Saint-Nazaire to the open sea.
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In the middle of the park, the electrical "substation", connecting the wind turbines and responsible for returning the current to the ground via a semi-buried cable, is already in place.
Other offshore wind farms are under construction in France.
That of Fécamp (Seine-Maritime) must be put into operation in 2023, before those of Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d'Armor), highly contested, and Courseulles-sur-Mer (Calvados).
In mid-March, the Prime Minister launched two calls for tenders to build two floating wind farms in the Mediterranean Sea by 2030, which could then supply electricity to one million people.
A park will be set up about twenty kilometers off Port-la-Nouvelle (Aude).
Another should also see the light of day about twenty kilometers from Fos-sur-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône), "subject to the results of the latest environmental studies".
