Starting Signal for French Offshore Wind Project Fécamp
Paris, France - Following the conclusion of the financing agreements between the consortium partners, EDF Renewables, a subsidiary of the EDF Group, the North American energy infrastructure company Enbridge Inc. and the German project developer Wpd have now announced the start of the Fécamp offshore wind farm.
The Fécamp offshore wind farm with a total capacity of 500 megawatts (MW) will consist of 71 Siemens Gamesa SWT-7.0-154 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 7 MW. The site where the turbines will be erected is located between 13 km and 22 km off the coast of north-western France. Of the consortium partners, EDF Renewables and Enbridge each hold a 35 percent share through their joint venture Éolien Maritime France SAS, while Wpd's share is 30 percent. The total capital cost of the project is estimated at EUR 2 billion, of which the major part will be financed by non-recourse loans at project level.
The project is scheduled to come on stream in 2023. In purely arithmetical terms, the electricity generated by the wind farm is expected to meet the electricity needs of 770,000 people. The electricity generated will be marketed via a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).
According to the companies, the construction of the wind farm will create more than 1,400 local jobs. During its 25-year service life, approximately 100 local ongoing full-time jobs based at the port of Fécamp will also be created to maintain the wind farm.
In addition to Siemens Gamesa as the turbine supplier, the consortium has concluded contracts with Bouygues Construction, Saipem and Boskalis for the foundations and Chantiers de l'Atlantique as well as GE Grid Solutions and SDI for the offshore substation, among others. The French transmission system operator RTE, responsible for connecting the wind farm from the substation to the coast and then until Normandy’s electricity grid, will start its onshore works in June.
In addition to the order for the Fécamp offshore wind farm, Siemens has already received an order for a further 500 MW offshore wind farm in the Bay of Saint Brieuc in Brittany from the offshore consortium Ailes Marines. For both projects (Fécamp / Satin Brieuc), the offshore turbines and rotor blades are to be manufactured at the new offshore wind turbine production facility of Siemens Gamesa in Le Havre, France. Production at the new plant is scheduled to start between late 2021 and early 2022. According to Siemens Gamesa, the production facility will be the first in the world where all main components for offshore wind turbines will be manufactured under one roof. At full capacity, the site is expected to create around 750 direct and indirect jobs, particularly in the areas of composite materials, mechanical assembly and logistics.
"These first two firm orders, which is almost 1,000 MW of capacity of the 2,500 MW currently in our French project pipeline, strengthens Siemens Gamesa´s leadership of the French offshore wind industry," said Andreas Nauen, CEO of the offshore business unit of Siemens Gamesa. In addition to the Fecamp and Saint Brieuc projects, Siemens Gamesa is expecting three further orders for the offshore wind projects Courseulles sur mer, Dieppe le Tréport and Yeu Noirmoutier with a total of almost 1,500 MW of additional capacity.
Source: IWR Online, 19 Jun 2020