European offshore wind leaders launch Searénité Consortium to advance marine noise mitigation

The growth of offshore renewable energy presents an important opportunity to further strengthen our commitment to responsible operations. Understanding and managing underwater noise becomes increasingly essential to protecting marine ecosystems. Activities such as ship traffic, sonar use, and offshore construction can affect marine life over large distances. Offshore wind farm installation is one of these activities.

While industry players have already implemented mitigation measures, Searénité aims to go further, introducing advanced technologies tailored to the marine environment to minimise potential impacts even more.

The objective of the Searénité project is to adapt the SubSea Quieter^®, an innovative technology designed to reduce underwater noise, to the specific requirements of floating wind turbine deep anchoring and offshore electrical substations founda-tions.

Developed and patented by Sealence, SubSea Quieter uses flexible panels made from an air-inflatable membrane. These panels are deployed underwater around offshore foundations during their installation, acting as an acoustic shield to reduce underwater noise. The result is effective noise reduction through a simple, economical, and ecological solution adapted to deepwater installations. This represents a major technological advance toward sustainable coexistence between energy development and marine biodiversity preservation.

The Searénité consortium brings together European players with complementary expertise:

• Chantiers de l’Atlantique: EPCIC of electrical offshore substations.
• EDF power solutions: Environmental integration and offshore wind expertise, providing specifications and regulatory insights to ensure compatibility with future commercial offshore wind farms.
• Heerema Marine Contractors: Technical advisory support for specification and design, focusing on mechanical and operational integration offshore, and installation interfaces.
• Menck: Technical advisory support for acoustic modelling, interface design, and deployment procedure development.
• RTE: Definition of requirements, technology validation at each stage, and provision of a real-world demonstration site.
• Sealence (consortium leader): Design, production, and demonstration of a SubSea Quieter version adapted for jacket foundation and floating turbine deep anchoring.
• Smulders: Technical advisory support, focusing on the design optimisation of the jacket.

Year one will focus on specifying SubSea Quieter for floating wind turbines anchors, offshore substations, and wind turbines using jacket-type foundations. Activities include design work, acoustic modelling, and hydrodynamic behaviour analysis under wave and current conditions. Pressurised tank tests will validate acoustic performance down to 300 m water depth.

Subsequent years will involve prototype production and testing in 2028 at the Port of Saint-Nazaire, followed by refinement and improvement. Subject to successful evaluations, a full scale demonstration is also foreseen during the installation of an electrical offshore substation.

The Searénité project was awarded a grant of €7.1 million.

This project is funded by the French State as part of France 2030 operated by ADEME.

A stakeholders group has been established to share key results with offshore wind players. Companies can join by providing financial support.

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