The Tidal Turbine That Began With a Cord Across a Highland River
In a fast-flowing river in the Scottish Highlands, the engineer David Mummery tied a length of cord tightly across the water, swam out, gripped it, and sank his head below the surface to let the current rush over him. That was more than a decade ago, and the point was not measurement but feel — how water behaves around a body in it.
The idea that came out of those swims became the Swimmer Turbine, a 50kW tidal generator named after the experience. Anchored to the seafloor, the fiberglass and steel device sits invisible below the surface and can generate enough electricity to power about 30 homes.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Thirty homes is a rounding error against a national grid, and a whole village's worth of supply if the machine is standing in your own water. The bet is on small being enough.
Small machines still have to survive the market that killed the big ones. The Pelamis P2, the first deep-water floating wave machine to put power into the national grid, was 180 metres long, widely admired, and in administration by 2014. Elegance has not been the scarce resource in marine energy.