A cleantech scale-up backed by some of the world’s largest renewable energy providers has increased its headcount by 55% following a number of new hires.
Kinewell Energy has recruited five new members of staff and appointed its first CTO as it seeks to rapidly accelerate the global transition to a net zero society.
Ruth Finch, who boasts over 20 years’ experience working across the engineering and energy sectors, has joined as marketing manager.
Cherish Brown has been appointed office manager and Jiaxin Zhang and Andrew Brown have joined as modelling and optimisation engineers.
Devendra Dhokare, a computer science graduate from the University of Bath has also joined as junior full stack developer.
The appointments follow a record year for Kinewell, in which it opened a new Newcastle head office, appointed its first CTO, Dr Henna Bains, and launched its long-awaited Kinewell Wake Optimised Turbine Arrangement (KWOTA) software to market.
Dr Andrew Jenkins, founder and CEO, said: “Our five new starters have joined at what is an incredibly exciting juncture for the company, so we are thrilled to have them all on board.
“Our software solutions have been used to help deliver some of the world’s largest and most challenging offshore wind farms over recent years, and the launch of the KWOTA turbine location optimiser, which further complements our KLOC cable layout optimiser and KDOTS export system optimiser solutions, has only seen our project pipeline increase.
“Looking forward, productivity enhancing solutions such as those developed by Kinewell will be key to helping nations the world-over ramp up renewable energy production and increase grid capacity and these new hires will be key to helping us support the global transition to a Net Zero society.
“They all have shown a real commitment to helping us achieve our mission of reducing the cost and accelerating the transition to net-zero. They are incredibly knowledgeable about their respective fields, so I’m confident they will all hit the ground running.”
Utilising AI-powered technology, KWOTA is Kinewell’s third software solution, enabling the developers of offshore wind farms to calculate the best position of offshore wind turbines, helping to maximise energy yields by reducing wake losses.
The development of the software was supported by funding from InnovateUK’s FastStart Programme and the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult’s TIGGOR programme – which was administered and delivered by the now defunct North of Tyne Combined Authority – and has supported the job creation.
Dr Henna Bains was promoted to the role of CTO in June, having previously worked as a senior R&D and consultant engineer.
She said: “It was a huge honour being appointed CTO of Kinewell Energy as we embark upon our next phase of growth as a company.
“Our aim over the coming years is to continue developing new infrastructure optimisation solutions, be it for offshore wind or other renewable sectors, and Ruth, Cherish, Andy, Jiaxin and Dev will be key in helping us achieve that.
“They will all bring something different to the business and fresh, unique perspectives to the work we do and we can’t wait to begin working with them.”
The recruits bring Kinewell Energy’s total headcount to 13.
