Swimmer Turbine: Coastal Towns Build Their Own Tidal Power — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- David Mummery conceived the Swimmer Turbine after lying submerged in a fast-flowing Highland river more than a decade ago, gripping a cord and feeling the current as he visualized a small-scale tidal generator coastal communities could run themselves.
- The Swimmer Turbine is a 50kW fiberglass-and-steel device anchored to the sea floor, capable of powering about 30 homes — orders of magnitude smaller than utility-scale installations like MeyGen's four 1.5MW turbines in the Pentland Firth or Orbital O2's 2MW floating turbine at Fall of Warness.
- Flex Marine Power was founded in 2011 after Mummery's earlier work on the Pelamis P2, the first deep-water floating wave energy machine to feed the national grid — a project that went into administration in 2014 despite being hailed as a marine power milestone.
- The turbine ships as roughly 20 components in a shipping container, allowing fishermen and local workers to bolt it together and launch it from a village slipway without cranes or outside contractors — Mummery compares the kit to an Ikea furniture pack.
- A 2020 full-scale proof-of-concept at Strangford Narrows in County Down, run with Queen's University Belfast, secured Flex Marine Power £968,000 from the UK government's Energy Entrepreneurs Fund for a nine-person team to develop the commercial model.
- On Islay last year, local fishermen used their own tractor to launch the device down their own slipway — a scene Mummery called 'my vision in a nutshell' — and he plans to return next year to begin generating electricity for the island from the invisible below-surface array.
Why it matters: Coastal communities have long watched giant utility-scale marine projects pass through their harbours without leaving power behind; the £968,000 government-backed Swimmer Turbine, with its 20-component kit and 50kW capacity for around 30 homes, hands the assembly, launch and ownership to local fishermen — and Mummery's plan to power Islay with the device next year is the first real test of that bottom-up model.
Ask SkimNews
