All the press releases concerning the news of our Institute and our various R&D activities.
09/05/2023 - Launch of DRACCAR, the first French Offshore Research Platform dedicated to Offshore Wind Energy, coupled with an Innovative €8.2 million R&D Programme
The interaction between offshore wind energy and the environment remains a major research challenge. DRACCAR is an offshore research platform coupled with a large-scale R&D programme to study the whole ecosystem, in particular birds, marine mammals and fish, but also wind parameters, the structure behaviour and the movement of sediments. DRACCAR intends to respond to the need for long-term acquisition of field data with the instrumentation of a measuring mast located off Fécamp. This data exploitation will be carried out within the framework of an innovative multidisciplinary R&D programme with an initial budget of €8.2 million, of which €4.9 million is supported by the ERDF and €950,000 by the Normandy Region. DRACCAR is led by France Energies Marines, the French Institute for the Energy Transition dedicated to offshore renewable energies, in partnership with the universities of Caen and Le Havre Normandy, INSA Rouen Normandy and the Normandy Region.
21/04/2023 - Iberdrola France joins France Energies Marines
Iberdrola France and the Institute for Energy Transition (ITE) France Energies Marines signed a research and development agreement last March, making Iberdrola France a member of the Institute. The new membership of this major international energy company will enable France Energies Marines to strengthen its capacity to overcome the obstacles to the development of offshore wind and ocean energy through collaborative R&D projects, thanks to additional funding and the expertise of Iberdrola's teams.
22/03/2023 - Floating offshore wind: successful launch of a buoy in the Mediterranean to study polyamide mooring lines
Sea trials lasting several months are being carried out in order to get as close as possible to the real conditions under which hybrid mooring lines, made up of chain and polyamide rope, are used. A demonstrator named MONABIOP was designed, assembled and successfully deployed on 18 February 2023 on the Mediterranean test site Mistral.
15/03/2023 - OPTILE: decarbonising the supply of electricity to island grids
Current electrification solutions for island territories are mainly based on the use of thermal power plants whose fuel supply is ensured by maritime transport from the continent. With a duration of 3 years and a budget of €1.5M, the OPTILE collaborative research project will provide tools to decarbonise the supply of isolated grids, by increasing the share of renewable energy in the energy mix.
20/02/2023 - Mooring of floating wind turbines: towards a reliable solution with polyamide lines
Polyamide seems to be a good candidate for mooring of floating wind turbines, but as this material deforms over time, it is necessary to qualify its long-term behaviour. This is the aim of the collaborative R&D projects POLYAMOOR (2017-2020) and MONAMOOR (2020-2024) led by France Energies Marines, Naval Energies and Ifremer. The experimentation carried out over nearly two years shows that the deformation is limited. Additional work indicates that it is possible to extrapolate the results of tests lasting only a few hours to the operating life of a farm (20 to 25 years).
06/02/2023 - Biofouling is a phenomenon to be taken into account for the design, durability, and sustainability of offshore wind farms
Biofouling is a crucial parameter to quantify and qualify in order to be properly taken into account. Given the stakes involved in a detailed understanding of the biofouling phenomenon, both from a technical and ecological point of view, a collaborative R&D project named ABIOP+ was conducted from 2019 to 2022 by a consortium of industrialists and academics. This large-scale project included many completely new experiments that led to several results with high added value for the sector.
31/01/2023 - Characterising offshore wind turbulence to increase the profitability of future Mediterranean wind farms
The Gulf of Lion in the Mediterranean will host several pilot and commercial floating wind farms in the coming years. It is therefore crucial for project developers to accurately characterise the wind resource as well as the turbulence. While the installation of anemometers on offshore masts is out of the question, due to their high cost of installation, operation and maintenance, the use of remote sensing devices such as profiling lidar is promising. This technology is now certified for estimating wind resources, but it is not widely used to characterise wind turbulence, which is what the POWSEIDOM collaborative research project aims to address. On 8 December 2022, the project partners deployed a Vaisala WindCube v2.1 profiling lidar on the island of Planier. This measurement campaign will allow the study of the evolution of the strong onshore winds characteristic of the Gulf of Lion which generate winter storms inducing a lot of turbulence. At the end of the 12 months of measurements, the very first Mediterranean database of wind and turbulence data acquired at sea and continuously will be created.
12/01/2023 - How do fish and crustaceans visit offshore wind farms?
France Energies Marines is currently monitoring fish and crustaceans at offshore wind farm sites in the Channel, Atlantic and Mediterranean. The movements of several hundred tagged individuals are recorded using an acoustic telemetry network deployed as part of the FISH INTEL and FISHOWF projects. The deployment of this technology on a large scale in operational or under construction offshore wind farms is a first and has been made possible thanks to close collaboration with many partners. The data collected will help to identify important habitats in these high-stake areas and to better assess the potential effects of the farms on fish and shellfish populations.
10/01/2023 - Herveline Gaborieau, new Executive Director of France Energies Marines
There has been a wind of change at the head of France Energies Marines with the beginning of the new year! Since 1 January, Herveline Gaborieau, previously Deputy Executive Director, has taken over as head of this Institute for energy transition focused on offshore wind energy. She succeeds Yann-Hervé De Roeck, who has managed the Institute since its creation in 2012.
02/11/2022 - 45 partners involved in 6 new R&D projects of France Energies Marines for a total budget of €9M
Each year, France Energies Marines develops and launches new projects as part of its multi-partner research activity, supported by the France 2030 Investment Plan. The end of 2022 sees the launch of six collaborative R&D projects with a total budget of €9M. These projects involve 45 private and public partners and are in addition to the 28 projects already underway. The themes addressed are directly related to the challenges that are emerging for the development of the sector.
09/11/2022 - A great leap forward towards a 20 MW floating wind turbine: EOLINK winner of the DEMO TASE Call for Projects initiated by ADEME
EOLINK and its partners - Everaxis Industries, France Energies Marines, Ifremer, Université Gustave Eiffel and Windglaz - have been designated winners of the call for projects "Technological bricks and pre-industrial demonstrators" initiated by ADEME in February 2022 ("AAP DEMO TASE"). The HT-20MW project is supported by the Pôle Mer Bretagne Atlantique and led by EOLINK.
23/02/2022 - Can mutualised anchoring reduce the cost of floating wind farms?
After the development of demonstrators and the deployment of small pilot farms, the next step for floating wind energy will be commercial farms, operating 20 to 100 turbines; this leads to a reflection on the anchoring systems to be used for such projects. In a 100-turbine wind farm, shared anchors could significantly reduce the cost of the anchoring system.
21/10/2021 - How to reduce the total cost of offshore electrical substations for future floating wind farms?
The LISORE R&D collaborative project led by RTE and France Energies Marines was set up to identify technological locks and potential solutions which will enable the reduction of the total cost of offshore substations by 2025 for commercial floating wind farms. Another R&D project called MOSISS was launched a few months ago. The objective is to develop and demonstrate a comprehensive and innovative methodology for in-service monitoring of the electrical and structural condition of floating substations in order to optimise the monitoring strategies with currently available solutions, in particular concerning sensors.
16/09/2021 - First results of the scientific measurement campaigns carried out off Dunkirk
Underwater dunes are relatively common off Dunkirk and Le Tréport. Formed by the combined action of marine currents and swell, these sedimentary structures, which are a few metres high, present a great morphological variability and can move. In order to understand the evolution of the underwater dunes with a high spatial and temporal resolution, eight bathymetric surveys were carried out between November 2019 and July 2021 to determine the topography of the seabed at three study sites, each with a surface area of 1 km². In addition, a current measurement campaign lasting more than a month was carried out in the spring of 2021, enabling the hydrodynamic processes at work in the area to be monitored.
06/09/2021 - Christophe Chabert becomes President of the Association France Energies Marines
Mr. Christophe Chabert, Director of Development Grand Ouest of EOLFI-SHELL, was elected President of the Association France Energies Marines at its General Assembly on 7 July 2021. He succeeds Mr. Julien Marchal, Director of Development, Commerce and Strategy at Naval Energies.
30/07/2021 - DTOcean+, an open-source software suite to design and optimise tidal and wave farms, will be released soon
Users of the DTOcean+ suite of tools will be able to generate designs for innovative ocean energy technologies and deployments. These designs are optimised for a wide variety of key metrics including lifetime costs, reliability, availability, maintainability, survivability, performance, environmental impact and socio-economic impact. They also balance technological and financial risk which, in combination with greatly improved cost effectiveness, ensure that ocean energy technologies become significantly more commercially attractive.
12/07/21 - wpd offshore France joins France Energies Marines
wpd offshore France and France Energies Marines have signed a research and development agreement. wpd offshore France joins the academic and industrial members who are pooling their efforts within the Institute for Energy Transition dedicated to marine renewable energy. This collaborative commitment is particularly focused on addressing the scientific barriers that are holding back the development of floating offshore wind energy.
23/06/21 - Publication of a synthesis report on the potential interactions between subsea power cables of ORE projects and coastal benthic ecosystems.
Originally published in French on 21 May 2021, the synthesis report of the SPECIES project documents the potential effects associated with subsea power cables of ORE projects, a recurring concern in consultative processes. The report is now available in English. The results of this project, coordinated by France Energies Marines and scientifically led by Ifremer, do not show any major negative impacts but call for further studies, particularly with regard to the impact of electromagnetic fields in situ.
24/05/2021 - Launch of the 2021 OceanSET Annual Report: an overview and analysis of progress in the ocean energy sector
The second OceanSET annual report was released on 24 May and is now publicly available on the OceanSET website. The results will be officially presented on Wednesday 26 May during a dedicated webinar. Hosted by OceanSET and ETIP Ocean, this event will provide an update of ocean energy activities across Europe and outline how the sector could evolve toward meeting ambitious European deployment goals.
11/05/2021 - A buoy to study biocolonisation on the site of the future Groix & Belle-Île pilot wind farm
Successful launch on 29 April for a 2-tonne buoy on the North Atlantic site of the future Groix & Belle-Île pilot wind farm developed by EOLFI. This rather unusual buoy was designed by Cerema and France Energies Marines, under the scientific supervision of the University of Western Brittany. Its originality lies in its mooring, which consists of two lines.
15/03/2021 - FISH INTEL: A cross-Channel partnership using cutting edge technology to enhance the habitats of key fish species
A cross-Channel partnership will use innovative underwater acoustic tracking technology to identify the environmental conditions a range of important marine species need in order to thrive. The €4million FISH INTEL project, supported by €2.8million from the European Regional Development Fund via the Interreg France (Channel) England programme, will focus on a series of sites along the coastlines of southern England, northern France and Belgium.
01/03/2021 - Standalone beta versions of the DTOcean+ tools are ready for the demonstration phase
The development of the standalone beta versions of the whole suite of the design tools for ocean energy systems is now completed. The beta versions are now ready for full integration and the demonstration phase against real scenarios. The final open source version of the suite and detailed documentation will be available in August 2021.
19/02/2021 - Final measurement campaign at La Jument lighthouse to optimise the design of offshore wind turbines
France Energies Marines is coordinating two collaborative R&D projects aimed at better understanding and predicting breaking waves in order to optimise the design of offshore wind turbines. Originality of these projects: using offshore structures as experimental devices at scale 1 and carrying out measurements directly in the field. The fourth and final data acquisition campaign at La Jument lighthouse has just begun.
14/04/2020 - Magnetic field of subsea power cables: 1st experimental results on the sensitivity of the European lobster
The behaviour of juvenile European lobsters is not affected by a magnetic field of similar intensity to that measured and modelled at one metre from high power electrical interconnections (1 GW). This is the main result of a study conducted by Ifremer and France Energies Marines, in collaboration with MAPPEM Geophysics, a Breton SME, and the Institute of Marine Research in Norway.
06/01/2020 - New graphic identity for France Energies Marines
After 8 years of activity, France Energies Marines, now the Institute for Energy Transition approved by the French State, has just redesigned its visual identity. This overhaul aims to mark the new dynamic of the structure whose achievements are now carried by a simplified joint stock company.