A method to design a diffuser augmented wind turbine (DAWT) is proposed, using as a guiding point the optimal pressure drop at the turbine. The use of concepts and expressions derived from a 1D analytic model helped to reduce the number of computational fluid dynamics simulations needed to find the optimal configuration. The proposed configuration can extract energy from the flow with the same efficiency as the state-of-the-art shrouded wind turbine (SWT) configurations but generating a significantly smaller wake, which makes this configuration a good candidate for wind farms or tidal applications. Furthermore, as a product of the 1D model, universal curves for the power coefficient have been obtained, as a function of the thrust coefficient, or disk loading, which have been compared with numerical and experimental results, showing a good agreement. Finally, the maximum ideal power coefficient has been found for a given configuration, which helps to estimate the margin for improvement of an actual design. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.