Van Oord completes its heavy lift job at Saint

The heavy lifting is done for Van Oord at the Saint-Brieuc offshore wind farm, following the installation of 62 jacket foundations. The Saint-Brieuc offshore wind farm is being constructed in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, 16.3 kilometres off the coast of Brittany. It is the first wind farm in France with jacket foundations. Once operational, the 496MW wind farm will generate enough clean energy for 835,000 inhabitants.

Ailes Marines, owned by Iberdola, contracted Van Oord to transport and install 62 jacket foundations for the wind turbines (3 pin piles each) and the 4 foundation pin piles for the offshore substation. Van Oord deployed its offshore installation vessel Aeolus to install the 190 pin piles and teamed up with other industry partners to install the jackets.

Conditions for building a wind farm in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc have been challenging. The extremely hard and rocky seabed and Atlantic environmental conditions challenged the company’s equipment and expertise. The Aeolus was therefore upgraded and an extensive spread of project-specific installation equipment was engineered, constructed and utilised on the installation vessel.

To ensure that the Aeolus could be safely jacked above sea level, the feet of the jacking system were modified with a flex-pin construction. Due to the geotechnical conditions at the site, an innovative drilling method was used to install the foundations. Project-specific drills were jointly engineered and constructed with Bauer Spezial Tiefbau. A newly designed drilling template functioned as a positioning and casing drilling tool to ensure the precise placement of the pin piles.

Ivar Daemen, Project Director Van Oord, said, “After executing a variety of projects in France, Van Oord reached a huge milestone by completing our very first highly complex offshore wind project here. Thanks to the great collaboration between our client Iberdrola, partners and dedicated project team, we have now finished our work on the Saint-Brieuc project. We’re proud to have contributed to France’s energy transition.”