Exactly. Other concept studies have looked at driving mechanical pumps to feed hydraulic pressure into a network [1], or (at a very small scale) mechanically drive a desalination unit [2]. As mentioned in the article, the problem is not figuring out if these concepts can work (usually they just do). The question is always: what will it cost compared to what we have now, and how much more complicated will the wind turbine become?

[1] https://www.tudelft.nl/en/2017/tu-delft/possibility-of-hydra... [2] https://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/drinking-with-th...