Hydrostatic wind-turbine drives with mechanical storage can decouple rotor power extraction from generator power transmission, providing a chance to reclaim power that otherwise gets rejected during above-rated operation. In particular, the issue investigated herein concerns what extent of super-rating of the hydrostatic turbine is appropriate relative to increasing hydraulic rating and blade loads before the latter effects outweigh the annual power benefit in delivered electricity. As a specific example, the 5 MW NREL Class I reference turbine model will be considered in four modes of operation – geared conversion, hydrostatic conversion without super-rating, fully super-rated hydrostatic storage, and hydrostatic storage super-rated under a certain cap – using stated generator, gearbox, hydraulic, and mechanical efficiencies; a Class I Rayleigh distribution of wind speeds with a mean wind speed of 10 m/s; and outputting average delivered power, capacity factor, maximum rotor power, maximum hydraulic pump rating, and maximum blade bending moment. A capture-return efficiency ratio is defined to relate the average power increase due to super-rating to additional hydraulic rating, subject to the requirement that the blade bending remains unchanged – thus ensuring that energetic and mechanical effects cannot be considered independently. The non-super-rated configuration involving hydraulic drive decreases average power from 2.67 MW to 2.34 MW due to uncompensated transmission losses. Fully super-rating the turbine produces an average power of 3.28 MW and a capacity factor of 66% while needing 15.7 MW of pump rating and increasing maximum blade bending from 10.52 MN-m to 10.58 MN-m. Capping the super-rating at a pump rating of 10.3 MW reduces maximum blade bending to 10.52 MN-m and yields an average power of 3.13 MW, a yearly power output of 27.42 GWh and a capacity factor of 63%. Results reveal that capped super-rating produces an 84.0% recovery in the super-rating power gain, yet uses just 48.1% of the additional pump power needed by super-rating.