With its 71 wind turbines, the Fécamp wind farm (Seine-Maritime), inaugurated on Wednesday May 14 by Emmanuel Macron, is the most powerful park on the open sea in France. All of the wind turbines on the Normandy site are now in operation, providing enough electricity (a total power of 500 megawatts) to meet the needs of 770,000 inhabitants.
This is the second park of this type commissioned in the country after that of Saint-Nazaire, inaugurated in November 2022. These massive investments in the renewable energy sector were undertaken as part of the multi-annual energy programming law (PPE)which also plans the opening of other offshore wind sites in the years to come.
The majority of parks in service or planned are located off the coast of the English Channel or in the Atlantic Ocean. These areas concentrate natural features (wind, swell or the depth of the seabed) but also electricity networks and industries conducive to the development of this type of offshore wind farm.
In addition to Fécamp and Saint-Nazaire, which are fully operational, the Faraman-Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône park is also in service, but it is a pilot site, which produces little electricity. Two other pilot projects are also planned in the Mediterranean (as you can see on the map below) to test the effectiveness of floating wind turbines : thanks to a float system, the wind turbine can be installed further from the coast, where the seabed is deeper and the winds more powerful.