Ocean Winds and Vestas have signed the contract for the EFGL floating offshore wind farm in a signing ceremony at WindEurope’s annual conference in Bilbao.
Ocean wind chief operating officer Grzegorz Gorski, chief EPCI officer Oscar Diaz, and Vestas’ GSVP for global offshore commercial Morten Burchgreitz signed the deal for three V164-10.0MW turbines for the French project, which is expected to be commissioned at the end of 2023.
Vestas senior director for offshore wind Benoit Gilbert (pictured right) said that the Mediterranean project marked “a milestone in the floating offshore wind journey”, adding that recent policy decisions will bring more opportunities for floating wind projects in markets such as Spain and France.
Ocean Winds placed the turbine order in late March.
The turbines will be installed on Principle Power foundations in water depths of 65-80 metres, 16 km off the coast of Leucate-Le Barcares.
The developer has doubled its offshore wind energy portfolio since 2020 and has just over 1GW of floating projects in the pipeline, Gorski said.
“We hope that the next contract will be for more turbines … we are ready for GW-scale [floating] projects,” he added.