Scotland Awards 25 GW in ScotWind Auction

During periods when these monsters, and solar farms, are producing more power than is needed for regular usage, opportunistic uses to capture carbon and hydrolyse water for hydrogen can soak up the extra capacity.

It is likely that demand for H2 and its products will come to compete with other uses, and drive the price. Hydrocarbon fuel refined from petroleum will become uncompetitive, and extraction will fall off, leaving mainly Saudi wells still producing at much reduced profitability.

The idea of using floating wind power to drive carbonic acid-laden surface water to abyssal depth is a good one. It probably would depend on selling carbon credits to finance it. A wind turbine used exclusively for pumping could dispense with the expensive electrical-generation nacelle and drive its pump by direct mechanical linkage. I imagine the pump in the nacelle, drawing water up from the base, first, thence to run down to a hose attached at the base and down a further 3000 ft; although a hydraulic linkage to a submerged pump might turn out to be better.

Also pumping water from the deep to the surface could produce more value, both to provide high-pH water to relieve reefs, and to provide cold water for use as a heat sink, e.g. to condense water vapor to supply fresh water.

This is roughly the total amount of current installed Great Britain wind generation capacity; once installed, this doubles capacity to 50GW.

Assuming a 20% capacity factor, that’s ~10GW of consistent wind generation.