French civil engineering construction company Eiffage has been awarded an EPCIC contract by RTE to develop and build three alternating current substations for connections to three wind farms off the French coast.

The contract, won through Effiage’s subsidiary Smulders, is for substations which will connect the Bretagne Sud, Narbonnaise Sud-Hérault, and Golfe de Fos offshore wind farms and their future extensions. Overall, the contract is worth more than €1.5bn ($1.76bn).

The contract covers the construction of jacket foundations and topside structures, which house the electrical equipment. The jackets will be 115 m high, 25 m wide, and 35 m long for the Bretagne Sud project, and approximately 110 m high, 45 m wide, and 50 m long for the Narbonnaise Sud-Hérault and Fos projects.

The topsides structures will weigh approximately 5,000 tonnes and measure over 20 m high, 35 m wide, and 70 m long.

Each substation will have a 750MW capacity and overall will handle the connection to the power transmission grid of more than 2GW of decarbonised electricity.

The various components of these substations will be entirely manufactured in Smulders factories or by its industrial partners in France and Europe. The jackets will be assembled at Eiffage Métal’s site in Fos-sur-Mer and the topsides will be assembled at the site in Vlissingen.

Smulders has already completed 40 substations and manufactured over 2,500 transition pieces, and has been involved in wind farm projects such as Dogger Bank, Hollandse Kust, Saint-Nazaire, and Provence Grand Large.