Progress on a potentially revolutionary power-magnifying offshore wind turbine technology that has been under development at Kyushu University in Japan for a decade is about to make a leap forward, with construction of a 100kW land-based prototype of the Wind Lens concept.
The brainchild of professor Yuji Ohya, the Wind Lens is based around a three-blade design with a strut-supported “brimmed diffuser” or “shroud”, a broad aerodynamic ring encircling the turbine’s rotor blades that “collects and accelerates” wind flow.
