Larivot EDF power plant – French Guiana

The project

The final stage has been reached for the Bachy Balineau Antilles Guyane teams on the new EDF power plant project.

« Re-launched in 2023 after a 2-year shutdown, the new EDF Production Electrique Insulaire (PEI) biofuel plant at Le Larivot will have a production capacity of 120 MW. It is part of French Guiana’s ecological transition, while meeting the region’s growing population and rising energy needs. »

The Larivot consortium, made up of Vinci Grands Projets, leader and process package, Vinci construction Outre-mer, Nofrayane, Dodin Campenon Bernard and Sogea for the civil engineering, external works and earthworks package, and Wärtsilä for the production units package, has acquired this project on a design-build basis.

The Larivot consortium has demonstrated its confidence in the Bachy Balineau Antilles Guyane teams on three occasions for this major project. Firstly, the teams carried out all the soil improvement by vertical drainage for the project in 2023, as a subcontractor of Sogea, for almost 20,000 drains.

Then, at the end of 2023, the piling teams, as subcontractors to Nofrayane, began a marathon project to optimise design, costs and deadlines. In the end, it took 155 tonnes of steel, 5,690 m3 of concrete and almost 8 months of work to build the 1,066 piles for the project. Most of these piles, with diameters ranging from 420mm to 820mm, were made using Starsol’s in-house process.

Finally, in May 2024, the sheet piling teams carried out the precise installation of the 32 m diameter circular sheet piling curtain, for which a curved guide was specially designed. The 72 AZ17-700 sheet piles, each 11.80 m long, forming the retaining wall for the power plant’s storm water basin, were installed by pendulum vibrofusion using an 80-t crane. Optimisation of the structure by the in-house BET BALINEAU enabled the steel tonnage to be reduced to a total of 130t of steel and 47m3 of concrete.