Idea of efficient electricity generating system model?

[sci_fan]

Hello,
Ok, this may be a stupid one, I'm not a scientist nor engineer, but it's been haunting me since, due to some conjuncture, it came into my mind. Sorry if this is not the right category for this topic.
I attached very rough sketches about this. A very summary description:
1. Any kind of river, just be on a slope.
2. We make a cavity, a hole, split in 2, one column with water, one empty. The one with water, of course, gets easily suplied with water without any energy from the river (communicating strainer wall, other, etc).
3. As in the pictures, we have 2 hatches that open and close to stop and allow water depending of the position of the ball(s).
4. Hollow balls, filled with air inside, maybe metallic in order to be able to use some permanent magnets on the top edge to easily redirect it back to the empty column when it gets out of the water column (?)
5. Very short story: horizontal hatch gets closed to block water; remaining water gets drained; vertical hatch gets open to allow entrance of ball; ball(s) get(s) down the empty column to the bottom V shape; vertical hatch closed, ball trapped; horizontal hatch opens, water gets in, ball goes up; on the top, some kind of efficient mechanism (magnets?) to redirect ball to the empty column; the hatches will be actioned by the energy provided by the ball(s) falling/going up generators;

Is it completely non-sense? Inefficient? Can you please let me know, so I can get this out of my mind :)

If it does make sense, from what depth can it provide enough energy to power the hatches (and what else? top mechanism to put the ball back in the empty column?) and to output energy? Maybe the drainage and ball capture mechanisme can be design efficient so the water volume to be replaced to be at minimum.

Now, if on a river it may make sense because of the water drainage due to the slope, I wonder if could there be any drainage system in non-flowing lakes/seas/oceans to get >1 energy ratio output after a given depth (at first glance, the water pressure makes it impossible to drain out and still obtain extra energy from the ball process, give it a pump, capillary system, etc).

Hit me (words) :)

 

[russ_watters]

Welcome to PF.

A couple of things:
1. This is a variant of a common type of perpetual motion machine called a "hydraulic ball motor", third one down on this link: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/serious/serious.htm
They don't work because they take a lot more energy than people realize to get the ball into and out of the fluid.

2. We don't discuss perpetual motion here. Not even simple debunkings, because if we did we would be awash in a sewer of crackpots (we tried once and it was a disaster). Thread locked.