What happens if the sun shines onto your solar panels, and you have too much power. I guess you could cover the panels with a blanket in such a case, but that would be manual intervention …
Do you need to consume all electric power you generate? Ways of wasting power include … heating water or electrostatics.
Most people would put surplus power they produce into the grid, but this is connected to government / cooperate regulations and paperwork, some would like to avoid that.
An island solution with solar panels is not connected to the power grid at all…
It’s a nice idea but impractical. Energy = mass x gravity x height
Say 10 tonnes of water pumped into a massive 20m high tower… E =10000x9.8x20 Joules. ≈ 2 mega joules.
Theres 3600 joules to a watt hour so divide that and you get:
≈ 550 watt hours (0.55kWh) of storage (assuming perfect efficiency of the turbines). About the same a half a dozen big cordless tool battery packs.
You only use excess energy that would otherwise go nowhere. I’m sure there are ways to make it as efficient as possible. But even if it’s not highly efficient, it’s a low carbon footprint method that is more sustainable than lithium batteries.
But yeah there might be other ways of storing energy. Maybe winding mechanics. Idk.