Geotechnical assessment and supervision of the works
This project involves the construction of a solar farm at the Tuilerie site in the municipality of Paulmy (Indre-et-Loire), approximately 50 km south of Tours.
The project as a whole covers an area of 22 hectares, of which 11 hectares are earmarked for photovoltaic panels, totalling 30,000 panels with a total capacity of 11.5 MWp.
The plant is expected to operate for 30 years.
The project site is occupied by former kaolin clay quarries (‘Argile de Paulmy’), used in particular for ceramics. It was therefore first necessary to develop the site of this abandoned quarry before installing the photovoltaic panels.
To achieve this, earthworks (general topographical reshaping) were carried out to level out the terrain and remove any unevenness (slopes and mounds), creating the flat, even surface required for the installation of the mounting structures and panels.
The volumes of earthworks planned for this purpose, estimated at 74,125 m³, are balanced between the volume of excavated material and the volume of backfill, with maximum excavation depths of 6 m and maximum backfill heights of 8 m.
TERRASOL was initially commissioned to carry out a geotechnical assessment (at the tender stage) involving the preparation of a technical opinion on the justification of the foundations for the photovoltaic panels, as well as on the implementation arrangements for backfill exceeding 1.5 m in height, including the definition of implementation specifications to ensure the adequacy of the foundation design assumptions.
TERRASOL subsequently carried out a geotechnical supervision assignment covering both the approval of technical drawings for the execution of the works and the review of compliance tests.
The supervision therefore involved the analysis and commentary on the test protocols drawn up by the contractor responsible for the works, as well as the interpretation of test results and the formulation of recommendations regarding the methods for constructing the embankments.
TERRASOL also supervised the pile load tests on the steel piles to ensure that the results obtained were consistent with the theoretical bearing capacity predictions derived from the ground investigations and basic geotechnical tests.
Client
NEOEN
Details
11.5 MWp
photovoltaic power station 22-hectare site, of which 11 hectares are earmarked for PV
