Offshore wind farm in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc: NKE Instrumentation offers its skills at the service of MREs

Offshore wind farm in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc: NKE Instrumentation offers its skills at the service of MREs

2020 is marked by the first EMR commercial project won by NKE Instrumentation. Indeed, the company is putting all its skills to good use in the field of marine renewable energy by providing a network of seven oceanographic buoys for meteorological and environmental measurements to monitor the construction work on the offshore wind farm in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc (in Brittany, FRANCE). The investment for this major project based in Brittany is being carried out by the Ailes Marines consortium under the responsibility of Iberdrola.

These oceanographic buoys, developed entirely by NKE Instrumentation, will be equipped with the new WiMo range multiparameter sondes to measure in real time the turbidity level at 1.50 meters below the water surface and 3 meters above the bottom.

This measurement monitoring project brings together the company’s many different areas of expertise:

Monitoring measurements at sea: WiMo multiparameter probes will be deployed to measure various parameters including turbidity, pH and chlorophyll.
Measurement of swell, current and weather.
Real-time satellite communication: data collected by the various sensors installed on the oceanographic buoys will be communicated in real time.
Acoustic communication: an acoustic modem ensures the transfer of data measured at the bottom to the surface buoys.
On-site deployment and seakeeping of the buoys even in periods of heavy swells and difficult conditions.
Monitoring and maintenance of the buoy network for a period of 41 months.
Display of data on a web server in real time.

In order to carry out this project, NKE Instrumentation decided to surround itself with local partners; all located less than two hours from Saint-Brieuc. These partners will support NKE Instrumentation for tasks such as the manufacture of floats, data processing or the chartering of vessels for the deployment and maintenance in operational condition of the buoys.