Need your help and opinions. Hybrid RE plant

[Innovation Solar Ltd.]

First of all, I'm a brand new member of this community so I haven't had much time to go through it but from the threads and posts I quickly read I've got the feeling I found the right place where to posts and share.

Here my question/situation:

We have got to replace 910 kVA genset plant installed on a Island down south Malesia/Borneo with a stand alone solar plant. Normally we'd propose batteries but this time I decided not go with battery energy storage instead to use the exceeding electricity produced by the solar plant for pumping up sea water into an artificial basin and then starting to release the water at dusk in order to produce electricity thank to a turbine.

Is my idea out of mind? The scope of it would be going 100 % green, avoiding cheap acid-lead batteries (difficult recycling). What are you opinions?

[Hrothgar]

make sure you screen your intake or you could chop up fish or your pump

Other than pump care your not alone in the technique, power companies have used the same method to store excess during down times. if you get interested later you might consider cracking some water into hydrogen for emergency use.

[Peter Kiproff]

Are you going to use Solar PV ? Tracking ?
What about Concentrated Solar from Heliostats ? steam can pump water & turn turbines.
Higher efficiency...
Peter

[jibbguy]

Solar PV should do fine as it will be a lot less complex than trying to use steam from solar thermal. You will still need some batteries, as a "reserve" and "buffer" for the inverter.

As for the mini-hydro part, you could use the system that was documented in Thailand that uses an off-the-shelf shallow well pump attached to an induction motor, to "run it backwards" and generate AC from the motor (using it as an alternator).

Micro hydro project, Tak Province, Thailand - YouTube

Generally speaking though, you may do better cost-efficiency wise with a combo of wind and solar, depending on the winds in your area. And a mid-range battery bank.