Ecole Centrale de Nantes (ECN), a French engineering school and research institution, has selected an international consortium led by Le Béon Manufacturing to supply the material needed for anchoring Floatgen, a floating wind turbine demonstrator developed by the French company Ideol.
The concept is based on a concrete floater built by Bouygues Travaux Publics.
ECN invited tenders for the provision of the anchoring system in January 2016. The contract for the supply of the materials for the system was signed on 1 June at the Seanergy Conference in Biarritz.
To better meet the specifications of the anchoring system defined by Ideol, Le Béon Manufacturing teamed up with Belgium’s Bexco and Dai Han Anchor Chain from South Korea, specialists in synthetic fiber rope and chain elements, respectively.
”One of our key markets for the past thirty years has been the offshore Oil & Gas industry, for which we supplied forged steel anchoring parts or lifting solutions,” said Clément Mochet, Sales Director at Le Béon Manufacturing.
”It is a very cyclic sector, strongly stunted by the actual price of the oil barrel. Our strategic repositioning and our determination to diversify are part of our desire to accompany this energetic transition. Today, the dynamic that seems to take place in France via the calls for projects of experimental wind farms and at an international level for the floating wind turbines is particularly promising. It confirms our choice to invest into a new production site in Plouay, France, to anticipate a high demand in terms of volume of parts.”
This first 2MW French unit will be installed on the SEM-REV experimental test site located off the town of Croisic in France, for a minimum of 2 years.
The project is sponsored by European funds, and by ADEME French agency in the framework of the Investment for the Future Program & Pays de la Loire Region.