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Comment by lgkk | Hacker News Reader

Solar barges with loads of wind turbines on them. Honestly that would be pretty glorious.

They could function as naval superchargers for ships.

Hang weights from reels, underneath, for energy storage: reel them out to generate, reel them back up to store excess for later. Gang dozens of reels on each motor/generator, for economy. (Using just one reel per motor/generator is what makes mineshaft energy storage uneconomical.) Make the weights out of peridotite rock, which is very cheap and 60% denser than most.

Certain places are better for this than others. Offshore of Rhodes, eastern South Korea, Monaco, the Philippines have very deep water not far off shore.

Or... drop an anchor, pull the floating barge against the tide towards the anchor when the sun/wind are optimal. Let the tide pull the barge away from the anchor (with a generator on the winch cable) when you want power while the sun/wind aren't providing power.

Tides have massive potential for power generation. The best part is how predictable they are.

Your idea of weights being raised and lowered makes more sense for land based energy storage (and it is being trialed right now, with promising results).

It is very hard to share a motor/generator between multiple weights on land, because you would need multiple adjacent mineshafts, so the economics are difficult. At sea there is plenty of depth anywhere you care to sink something.

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