Ademe supports the new Eolink floating wind turbine to the tune of 14.9 million

Based in Brest, the company Eolink aims to shake up the emerging sector of floating wind turbines. Manufacturers’ current offers relate to “wind turbines with a single mast. We are developing a new type with 4 masts, which will make it possible to reduce the volume of steel required by 30%”, specifies Alain Morry, commercial director.

As a result, this breakthrough technology will reduce the cost of building a floating wind turbine by “20%, which will also benefit from reduced maintenance”, he adds. This perspective justifies the support of Ademe, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, which is providing the Eolink project with aid of 14.9 million euros, in the form of a repayable advance, as part of the France 2030 programme.

The objective of the Breton company is to build a vast wind turbine 50 meters wide and 150 meters high. With a power of 5 MW covering the annual electricity consumption of 7,000 people, it will be installed off Le Croisic, on the sea trial site of the Ecole centrale de Nantes. A partner in this project, the establishment has a marine site connected to the electricity grid via an undersea cable.

Demonstrator planned for 2024

The other main partner is Valorem, a French specialist in green energy, which will be responsible for assembly and maintenance. The advantage of Eolink’s floating wind turbines is that they can be installed far from the coast, because they are not fixed by piles but connected to a floating buoy anchored to the ground, 30 meters deep.

If the schedule is respected, the demonstrator will operate in 2024. Calls for tenders are underway for the construction of this wind turbine, knowing that the main companies selected, whose names will be known in a few weeks, are not French. “Some lack the appropriate skills and others face full order books,” explains Alain Morry.

To support its R&D, Eolink brought the Spanish company Acciona Energia into its shareholding last summer. “She took 24% of the capital and brings us 5 million euros,” he says. Still, the objective of Ademe and the Ecole Centrale de Nantes is to create in the medium term “a new industrial sector” on the national territory.

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