News wrote:
I wrote:
Doubling the number of turbines without considering how you are going to
use them is a false economy.


But could work out cheaper depending on how you use them.

I didn't say it couldn't be.

You also
redundancy, which in an isolated location is desirable.

Redundancy comes at a price if it isn't needed. Our redundancy is having
the fall back of two diesel generators and some solar PV panels.
Redundancy needn't mean unnecessary duplication. Wind turbines need
masts, planning permission, building mount points, charge
controllers,...duplicating all this isn't straightforward. Also, the
chances are if a storm is powerful enough to damage one turbine there's
a good chance it will damage both.

Best not to have
batteries. At the mo', expensive and don't last long - although battery
technology is coming on brilliantly.

If you are in an isolated location and you are using the turbine for
electricity as well as heat then you need batteries (or some sort of
pumped water storage system.) Yes batteries are expensive but used
correctly they'll last 10 years or more

Couple the windmill directly to the immersion of a thermal store, then all
the wind energy is transformed to heat energy, which is stored in the
thermal store.

Yes, but when the thermal store hits its max the turbines are then doing
nothing. That was my initial point. Having two turbines heat the water
twice as quickly is of no use if you don't use the heat quickly. A
second system such as direct solar water heating would make more sense here.

When you use an intermediate battery you loose quite a bit
of energy. Then this is used for low temperature UFH and DHW.

You lose energy in all processes. It's managing energy use and loss that
makes the difference.

Colin