A centerpiece of the Saint-Brieuc bay wind farm assembled in Belgium
If attention has been focused since last May on incidents related to drilling the foundations of wind turbines, one of the key pieces of the future wind farm in the bay of Saint-Brieuc is taking shape in Hoboken on the port of Antwerp. in Belgian. This is the electrical substation, a huge 3,400 ton platform. It looks like a building.
You have to imagine it in the middle of the 62 wind turbines thirty meters above sea level. “We will connect the wind turbines to the earth and we will manage to raise the voltage from 66,000 to 225,000 volts”, explains Pierre Mossoux, one of the site managers. “The goal is to bring the maximum amount of energy produced on land”. According to Ailes Marines, the project leader, the wind farm provides the equivalent of the electricity consumption of 835,000 inhabitants each year.
The platform should be installed between May and July 2022 in the bay of Saint-Brieuc, from Belgium on a barge.
Like a puzzle
In addition to this electrical substation, the construction of part of the foundations of the wind turbines has started at the port of Brest and the Siemens Gamesa plant in Le Havre where the turbines will be manufactured will be operational in 2022.
The pieces of the puzzle are each built in their own room before being assembled in Saint-Brieuc, observes Stéphane Alain Riou, director of development and territory at Ailes Marines.
“Five planning engineers are constantly working on the planning The final objective is always a delivery of the fleet in the last quarter of 2023», Explains Stéphane Alain Riou.
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Despite the oppositions, it is difficult to comment on this mega-project at 2.4 billion euros whose story began ten years ago, perhaps now collapsing.