First helicopter evacuation exercise on a wind turbine in France !
On March 24, 2022, a first in France took place on the SEM-REV test site: a helicopter evacuation exercise of a floating wind turbine, FLOATGEN. This exercise in real conditions is the result of cooperation between CROSS Etel, Civil Security, SNSM, BW Ideol and Centrale Nantes.
Risk prevention is essential in the field of Marine Renewable Energies (MRE). Practicing evacuations during operations at sea on floating wind turbine demonstrators allows all players to test the rescue chain and to prepare the future.
For this evacuation exercise, CROSS Etel, Civil Security, SNSM, BW Ideol and Centrale Nantes defined a scenario upstream reflecting a possible situation: the injury of an operator during a maintenance intervention on the offshore wind turbine.
The PIM FLOATGEN (Maritime Intervention Plan) was therefore decreed and the rescue chain was put in place. This exercise in real conditions made it possible to assess the specificities of a floating wind turbine during a helicopter winch, in particular those of the floater concept of the Floatgen project developed by BW Ideol, and to prepare for possible medical evacuations by air.