Alstom inaugurated France’s first offshore wind turbine production plants. Those new facilities will manufacture nacelles and generators for the Haliade™ 150-6MW turbines. The towers and blades, they will be made in the Alstom plants in Cherbourg. Construction work begun in May 2013 was completed this autumn, once the equipment was transferred from the temporary facility to the final plants.
The two new factories have been sized to each produce up to 100 wind turbines per year. They will be fully operational in early 2015, with production expected to start in the first quarter of 2015. An early project will be to build non-standard turbines, including 5 intended for the Block Island wind farm in the US, which are expected to be commissioned in 2016 and represent France’s first export contract in the offshore wind energy sector, as well as being the first offshore project in the United States.
The plants in Saint-Nazaire will also be assembling the 238 offshore turbines that are planned to equip the three facilities installed by EDF, the exclusive partner of Alstom on the French market, in Saint-Nazaire, Courseulles-sur-Mer and Fécamp starting in 2017.
This Haliade™ 150-6MW wind turbine is designed for a marine setting. Thanks to a rotor exceeding 150 metres in diameter, the turbine’s yield is 15% higher than that of other same-generation wind turbines. With 6 MW of power, it is capable of supplying the equivalent of 5,000 households per annum and can save over 21,000 tonnes of CO2 every year.
