The European Commission has found four French projects promoting electricity generation from renewable wind energy sources to be in line with EU State aid rules. The “Groix Belle Ile” project will be located in the Atlantic Ocean, while the other three projects(“Golf du Lion”, “Eolmed”, and “Provence Grand Large”) will be located in the Mediterranean Sea. The demonstration floating wind farms will each be composed of three to four turbines and will each have a total installed capacity of 24MW.
The turbines will be installed in the sea on floaters. The turbines will be interconnected with each other and connected to land through an underwater cable. Each of the four demonstration wind farms will use a particular combination of turbine, floater and cables. The objective of the public support is to test these different technological solutions, with the long-term goal to test this technology before deploying it on a larger scale. The demonstration wind farms will receive both investment aid and operating aid. Part of the investment aid will be paid in the form of repayable advances.
