In a secret location in the Highlands of Scotland, there’s a fast-flowing river that’s the key to understanding the massive power of water.
It’s where engineer David Mummery found himself more than a decade ago.
With a length of cord tied tightly across the river, he swam out, gripped firmly, and let the unstoppable current rush over as he sunk his head below the surface.
“As an engineer we do the maths and stuff,” he says, “but sometimes you can get a lot more from actually touching the water and feeling it”.
As he lay down in the powerful rapids, he visualised a new type of small-scale tidal energy generator.
It’s an innovation he says could change lives for people in coastal communities.
“I’d be under the river, feeling the turbulence of the water rushing over me.
“Trying to envisage how this turbine needed to interact with that environment – to understand the way the water was working.”
