Our Technology

Stakes

Internet, transport, heating, industry…

Our society demands and will demand more and more electrical energy.

For our environment and future generations, we must find a sustainable but also economically acceptable solution.

A sustainable future with intermittent solutions?

For several years, progress has been made. Solar and wind farms are growing, notably thanks to a cost reduction surrounding these technologies.

But, when the sun or the wind disappears, the only way to keep the light on it to use conventional power plants, mostly using fossils fuels, thus contributing to global warming.

In order to overcome such variability in renewable energy production, it is necessary to build, in parallel, an efficient energy storage solution.

However, the cost of conventional solutions (i.e. batteries) currently remains much too high.


At Sink Float Solutions, we have developed and patented an energy storage technology that values two free and unlimited elements: gravity and depth of the seas.

Our technology brings a simultaneous response to 3 principal challenges energy storage is facing today.

It is easy to implement, scalable, and very economical.


Easy principle

Imagine concrete masses attached to floats below the sea surface. Besides, a barge equipped with a winch connected to the electric network by an underwater cable.

When the network displays an excess of electricity of wind or solar origin, the winch will transform it into potential energy by raising the masses of concrete one by one from the bottom of the sea to the surface, further hanging them to the floats.

© Sink Float Solutions | All Rights Reserved
© Sink Float Solutions | All Rights Reserved

Then, during periods with no wind or sun, this energy can be transformed again into electricity in order to supply consumers. For this, the winch will not operate as a motor but in generator mode (kind of dynamo) by letting the masses down one by one.

Economic disruption

Depending on the distance to the coasts, the depth of the sea, and the necessary storage time (MWh/MW), our system requires 5 to 20 times less investment than competing storage solutions.

Overall, over a complete cycle, the energy efficiency is above 80%.


Flexible and modular

Do you want to store energy for 6 hours? 12h? 24? 3 days? No problem. Our technology will always offer you an optimal economic compromise, meaning, without generating unnecessary costs.

Smallest to biggest

Despite some fixed costs (operations) and other scale-related effects (hydrodynamics and cost of the underwater connection), our technology is economically viable for powers of more than 10 MW, which corresponds to a power 50 times lower than that of a conventional cycle gas plant.

Assembling existing components

Barge, winch, concrete weights, anchor cables, steels floats.

All these elements already exist and have been used on an industrial scale, for decades, in the offshore sector. We just need to assemble those differently.

Quick industrialization

Our storage technology can, therefore, be industrialized in less than a year while outsourcing component manufacturing to many existing shipyards.

Patented technology

Storm resistance, control of masses movement, hooking/unhitching operations, control of maintenance, and anchoring costs.

Our technology is available in many variants in order to reduce costs while facilitating its operation. Those variants are grouped into several patent families.

Environment-friendly, discreet and resistant

The materials entering into this technology are available in inexhaustible quantities and are ecologically clean.

Located far away from the coasts (10 to 200 km depending on the cases), the storage system is not visible and, in its complete underwater version, is not hindering maritime traffic.

Despite a size that can exceed several hundred meters long, in its complete underwater version, the storage system becomes undetectable and, therefore, impossible to sabotage or destroy with conventional means.

At SinkFloatSolutions, we are thus confident that no obstacle will prevent the rapid and large-scale development of economical and renewable energy mixes.

Ready to develop a sustainable and economically viable energy storage solution?