The completed power distribution hub (PDH) ready for deployment. (Image courtesy of Hydro Group)

The Floatgen floating wind turbine installed 22 km off the French Atlantic coast became fully operational last month. The turbine is the first operational unit of the floating foundation concept from Ideol and built by Bouygues Travaux Publics. A similar turbine is expected to be operational soon off the coast of Japan.

Subsea cable and connector specialist Hydro Group, along with its French regional partner Wenex Equipements, installed a complete subsea electrical and optical interconnect package, built to withstand harsh environmental conditions, for the project. According to Hydro Group CEO Douglas Whyte, the work included a 24kV hydro renewable connector (HRC) that “connects the device cable to the export cable, permitting three subsea three-phase electrical cables to be mated without compromising the circuit. In addition, a custom-built stainless steel PDH allowed flexible in-line connections.”

The floating turbine was developed and tested at the Centrale Nantes SEM-REV test site, a European multi-technology offshore testing site that is connected to the grid. The test site includes a designated maritime zone 20 km off the coast that is equipped to measure sea and weather conditions (wind, swell and local parameters); electric infrastructure to connect the system to the ERDF medium-voltage network via an 8 MW 25km-long cable; a hub enabling the simultaneous connection of three machines; and a research center, located at Penn-Avel, to receive and analyze data and control the test devices. —Hydro Group/Floatgen

Learn more about the project at http://floatgen.eu/.