Mojo Maritime, a part of James Fisher Marine Services (JFMS), has, together with Ecole Centrale de Nantes, enabled Floatgen to supply energy to the French electrical grid from the SEM-REV marine energy test site, near Le Croisic in France.
Ecole Centrale de Nantes and Mojo Maritime worked at the Floatgen floating wind turbine, which is one of the few prototypes installed in the world today, to replace a defective connection box which was preventing an electrical connection to marine energy converters.
Ecole Centrale de Nantes installed the subsea connection hub, to which three demonstrators can connect simultaneously on the SEM-REV site two years ago.
However, final validation checks on the connection revealed an insulation defect on one of the phases of the 25 km long underwater cable, which had to be repaired to ensure it wouldn’t jeopardize future projects and was ready to supply energy to the French electrical grid.
The Ariadne offshore construction vessel was chartered for the task. The 8MW electrical connection is now operational and will start supplying its first kWhs this summer, the company noted.
Mojo Maritime France project manager, Maxime Morandeau , said: “It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with Ecole Centrale de Nantes on this project. To optimize operations we used Mermaid for accurate modelling and scenario planning, which reduces the risk of any unexpected situations or costs, and meant that the project was completed according to plan.”