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Kineo was founded in 2002 to specialize in product design
and development in the solar industry. Early projects
involved consulting on the development of low cost batch
solar water heaters, designing seamless racking systems for PV, and
the development of PV/Thermal hybrid arrays.
In addition to pure product design and development, we have
filled industry needs for system design services ranging
from commercial sites to high-end homes as well as training
seminars on system design.
While we specialize in product development & deployment, we
often combine the industry and analytical experience of our
lead engineer with the product design expertise of our
design engineer to deliver on new ideas & projects.
We do not rest on our significant abilities, but instead
leverage those abilities in novel ways to deliver on unique
projects. |
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Josh Plaisted -
Lead Design Engineer / President |
| Before entering the solar
field in 1997, Josh was a consulting mechanical engineer
in the field of optical disc coatings and in-vacuum heat
transfer. It was the rapid progress and cost
reductions in this field that led him to believe
similar opportunities might be possible in photovoltaics
(PV). In
1998 he entered the Solar Energy Laboratory (SEL) at the
University of Wisconsin - Madison as a researcher under
Dr. William Beckman. While at the SEL Josh shifted
his studies from PV to solar thermal systems. He
focused his research on the thermal performance of
systems installed 20+ years earlier employing computer simulation models to
calibrate actual system operation and then predict
performance under different scenarios. Josh
graduated from UW-Madison in 2000 with a MS in
Mechanical Engineering and a masters certificate in
Energy Analysis & Policy from the Institute for
Environmental studies. Mr. Plaisted entered
the solar thermal industry in 2000 as a design engineer
with SunEarth Inc. As the lead design engineer at
SunEarth he was in charge of product development on
items ranging from basic solar collector design to heat
exchangers. Product development
also included the packaging of components made by
SunEarth together with other products to form complete
packaged heating systems. Additional duties included the
construction, setup, and upgrading of existing and
new production equipment. Josh has served as an industry liaison
with the Industry Association of Plumbing & Mechanical
Officials (IAPMO) and sits on the board of directors for
the Solar Ratings & Certification Corporation (SRCC). |
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Brian West -
Design Engineer |
| Brian graduated from
Virginia Tech in 1993 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. His background is in electro-mechanical machinery
design and consumer product design. While living in New
England, some of his previous companies included
Foster-Miller designing robots that cleaned nuclear
steam generators, MPM Corp designing pick-and-place
machinery that fabricated electronic circuit boards, and
Burton Snowboards designing world-class snowboard
bindings.
Moving to San Francisco in 2001, Brian has focused on
renewable energy. He worked at Green Mountain
Engineering, a consulting company dedicated to providing
engineering services to clean energy technology
companies. Here he helped to industrialize thin film
photovoltaic products and performed R&D for the
optimization of a novel silicon wafer process.
Brian began working at Kineo Design Group in the
Spring of 2005 as the lead engineer designing a
PV/Thermal system for Zero Energy Homes. He is designing
the new racking system and helping to build the test
facility for these systems.
Brian is currently an active member of the Sierra
Club Energy Subcommittee, finding practical solutions to
the San Francisco Bay Area’s energy issues, focusing on
renewables and energy efficiency. He also
volunteers many weekends working with Grid Alternatives installing PV for low-income residents. |
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