FRANCE
TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATION
PROJECTS IN THE WATER
France has now several test centres fully equipped and grid connected where demonstrators are being tested.
 Installation of cable cast iron shells tested in various configurations at SEM-REV. |
At SEM-REV on the west coast offshore Le Croisic: Floatgen, the 1st French floating offshore wind turbine has been exporting power to the grid since September 2018.
In addition, in the framework of the FORESEA, Eu-Interreg project for the North West Europe area, full scale demonstrators, instrumentation and subsystems for OE are also being tested. Presently being tested are an acoustic monitoring system with SeAc (Nereis Environment) and cable cast iron shells with iBOCS (FMGC).
At SEENEOH, the tidal test site in the Gironde Estuary in the city of Bordeaux (Grand Opening in March 2018), the ¼-scale HydroQuest 80 kW marine turbine is the 1st demonstrator to be connected to the grid during an 18-month test. The 2nd user is a 2 vertical axis turbine floating device by DesignPro which required only 3 h of marine operations for its installation.
HydroQuest & DesignPro floating tidal energy converters tested at SEENEOH. |
At BREST Saint-Anne, EOLINK has successfully tested a 1/10-scale floating wind turbine for 4 months, beginning in June 2018.
 Re-installation of the Sabella D10 turbine in the Fromveur Passage |
SABELLA EUSSA project
The SABELLA D10 (10 m diameter) turbine has returned to its pilot site in the Fromveur Passage connected to the Ushant Island grid (Brittany) in October 2018, for another 3-year demonstration programme.
Refitting and new monitoring have benefitted from several EU supported projects: ICE for the redundancy of the conversion system and integration of short-term energy storage, MONITOR and REALTIDE for monitoring.
In the CF2T project, new gravity based foundations will be designed.
 1/6-scale Eel Energy tidal turbine prototype test towed by the Penzer vessel (Iroise Mer-tsm) |
EEL GEN project
A new round of testing of the 1/6-scale Eel Energy tidal turbine was successfully completed in the Bay of Brest in March 2018. The project partners are Eel Energy, Hutchinson, Baron, Aboard Eng and Ifremer. The tests aimed at membrane and component optimisation and showed a 50% increase in performance.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqnov_sSI8
PLANNED DEPLOYMENTS
 WAVEGEM buoy and project partners during the christening ceremony, 18 December 2018. |
Launch of the WAVEGEM buoy (IHES project)
The official launch of the WAVEGEM buoy, developed within the framework of the IHES (Integrated Harvesting Energy System) project, took place in Saint-Nazaire on 18 December 2018. One of the objectives of the IHES project, started in 2015 with funding from BPI France, was the design and test of an autonomous multiservice buoy: WAVEGEM.
The project is led by Geps Techno and involves: Chantiers de l’Atlantique, Blue Solution (Bolloré), Centrale Nantes, ICAM, Ifremer and SNEF. The WAVEGEM buoy will be deployed at the Centrale Nantes SEM-REV offshore test site early 2019.
SABELLA PHARES project
With the aim of demonstrating the availability of renewable energy solutions for an insular community of 2000 inhabitants (Ushant Island), the PHARES project will combine two D12 Sabella turbines, a wind turbine, a PV solar plant and a storage capacity to be operational by 2020.
