Paul Kouris

Paul Kouris is a Greek-Australian barrister and inventor who conceived the Kouris Centri Turbine in 1975 while he was a law student at Monash University. He kept the idea secret for more than twenty years, developing it with the assistance of engineers until it became publicly known in 1996, and he built a prototype hydro-electric system using large water tanks in Victoria, Australia. The prototype showed a power output increase of up to 27 percent when the turbine was placed in a water vortex compared with its traditional downstream position, and in 2000 the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted him a patent for the invention.