French Bretagne Sud Tender

Recently, ten pre-qualified developers for the French 250MW Bretagne Sud tender were announced along with the tender’s price cap of €120MW ($136/MWh). Although the final floater and turbine technology for most of these tenderers is unknown, Quest FWE applies in its analysis a PSR (Preferred Supplier Relationship) method to ‘calculate’ project costs through its data model Q Vision based on PSR-expected combinations of technology.

Q FWE ran an internal study to see how well these developers’ floater design- and turbine configurations will compare in relation to the target price cap. The analysis specified the full 250-270MW project capacity for each of the combinations. Further it specified identical project cases with a 10 ,15 and 20MW turbine. These may include application of larger floaters to accommodate the larger turbines in order to illustrate the cost savings associated with meeting the same windfarm capacity with larger turbines and fewer units.

With the 10 MW turbines as a base case, the design/turbine combinations see an overall project cost reduction of 10-15% on average for 15MW turbines and even 20% for a modeled 20MW turbine spec.

The results of the study show the highest LCoE of €116/MWh for a 10MW turbine/floater combination while the 20MW combinations range around €70/MWh with one exception below that. These values indicate ongoing cost reductions of European Floating Wind are a reality and in line with some developers’ public statements.

(The chart & illustration below highlight the basic variations inherent in running different project design-MW combinations through Q FWE’s proprietary QVision cost model)