French waters off Saint-Nazaire are buzzing with inaugural activity today (September 22) as the country’s first offshore wind farm was officially commissioned and, in a separate event, the first platform offshore green hydrogen production in the world has been launched.
As reported by our brothers news site offshoreWIND.bizFrench President Emmanuel Macron arrived at the Saint-Nazaire site this morning to inaugurate the first commercial-size offshore wind farm in France.
The 480 MW wind farm is located between 12 and 20 kilometers off the Guérande peninsula.
The Saint-Nazaire project is owned and developed by Eolien Maritime France (EMF), a consortium made up of EDF Renewables, Enbridge and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
At the same time, in the port of Saint-Nazaire, the French hydrogen technology company Lhyfe inaugurated its offshore hydrogen production platform which is part of a pilot project at the SEM-REV test site, managed by Centrale Nantes.
The platform, developed by Lhyfe and powered by a floating wind turbine, is the world’s first offshore hydrogen production facility.
The electrolyser is installed on the floating platform of GEPS Techno and will be connected to the various sources of marine energy available on the sea trial site, including Floatgen floating wind turbine.
The offshore test site meets all the criteria to validate offshore hydrogen production technology before moving to large-scale industrial deployment in 2024according the announcement of last year’s project.
The world’s first offshore hydrogen production site was set up by Lhyfe in collaboration with Chantiers de l’Atlantique, which also delivered the offshore substation of the offshore wind farm inaugurated today.
The French company won the EPCI contract for the offshore electrical substation of the Saint-Nazaire wind farm in June 2019 as part of a consortium also including GE Grid Solutions and Société de Dragage International (SDI), a subsidiary of DEME Group.
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