Rob Morley wrote:
In article , "Ian
Stirling" says...
Rob Morley wrote:
snip
Could they not have used a wind pump instead of electric?

A heat pump is more than simply a pump.
It's basically a refrigerator cooling the field where the coil is buried
and heating the church.

I know - would you be happy if I called it a compressor rather than a
pump?

Don't care, it's just some may misunderstand.

While in theory you could run this from wind power, it'd be a really
large and complex installation to do so.

Why? Wind turbine goes around, compressor goes around.

Because I'm not aware of any that do it that way.
It's of course possible.

(in combination with battery bank to level the load, and ...).

Why would they need this?

To make the heating work when the wind does not.
A 4Kw (mechanical or electrical) windmill is not going to be cheap
or easy.