Why Not Use heavy Bouys w/ Pumped Water Energy Storage

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https://youtu.be/iGGOjD_OtAM

I’m assuming for a similar reason the thing in the video is impractical?

Otherwise would having either Bouys or maybe a boat with a bunch of weights on it add to the efficiency? The rising water will lift it. Move the boat/weights/bouy out of the water reservoir

Need energy? Drain the water. Water gone? Lower the weights.

More effort than it’s worth? Potential issue being the water reservoir not filling all the way, but perhaps there are ways to engineer around it.

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s already be said, but I think it’s worth repeating. Adding a buoy/boat to the cannot improve efficiency, not even a little.

The energy to lift the boat comes from the pumps as they fill the reservoir.

If the boat **drops with the water** as you let water out, then the energy of the boat dropping is recovered by the turbine as the water flows through it.

If you **hold the boat up high until the water is gone** and then drop the boat, then the energy of the boat dropping is **NOT** recovered by the turbine as the water flows through it. Yes you can now use a generator connected to a cable (or something) to recover the energy as you drop the boat, but it’s **the same amount of energy** that the hydroelectric turbine missed out on when the boat didn’t drop with the water.

In both cases, there is no gain in energy. The pump that raised the water level supplied the energy to lift the boat. In the second case, a whole lot of extra equipment was added to get exactly the same energy back out of the system that the hydroelectric generator could have gotten anyway.

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