Unless I’m misunderstanding, it seems like pumping the water up from an aquifer to the surface would be enough height to act as a battery- you wouldn’t drain it to ground level, you would drain it back down into the aquifer.
Average water table depth in West Texas is 4.2 meters, and water weighs about 9810 N per cubic meter. If you dig a pit 1 meter deep to store the water at ground level, that reduces your height above aquifer to about 3 meters. You then can store about 30,000 J per square meter of pit area.
For perspective, that is about enough energy to keep a lightbulb on for 10 minutes. It is about .008 kWh. Average household energy consumption is about 30 kWh/day. You’d therefore need a pit that takes up about an acre to store enough energy to power your house for a day. This may interfere with your farming plans somewhat.
Unless I’m misunderstanding, it seems like pumping the water up from an aquifer to the surface would be enough height to act as a battery- you wouldn’t drain it to ground level, you would drain it back down into the aquifer.
Average water table depth in West Texas is 4.2 meters, and water weighs about 9810 N per cubic meter. If you dig a pit 1 meter deep to store the water at ground level, that reduces your height above aquifer to about 3 meters. You then can store about 30,000 J per square meter of pit area.
For perspective, that is about enough energy to keep a lightbulb on for 10 minutes. It is about .008 kWh. Average household energy consumption is about 30 kWh/day. You’d therefore need a pit that takes up about an acre to store enough energy to power your house for a day. This may interfere with your farming plans somewhat.