Ross Sinclaire
Founder and CEO of Jupiter Hydro Inc.
Ross has always been passionate about developing new concepts and ideas, especially related to sustainability. He is the inventor of the Jupiter Hydro technology. It is no accident that he has come up with a “Better Way” to make in-stream power from flowing water as he has been coming up with “Better Ways” all his life!
Ross moved to Calgary from Saskatchewan at age 19. He had spent a lot of time on the farm with quite creative relatives relating to machinery and in school he was the top of his class in physics. He trained to be a plumber, pipe fitter and gas fitter and had his journeyman certifications at age 22. He worked on an industrial camp assembly line for ATCO, worked in residential, commercial and industrial pipe fitting and plumbing projects. He worked on the original Syncrude project in Fort MacMurray. He was the piping superintendent on a large compressor station where he directing all the welding and fabrication on site. He spent 8 months in a welding fabrication shop in Calgary. At age 30, he started his own mechanical contracting business in Calgary and he immediately began questioning the mechanical systems which were designed for the commercial projects he began doing. Over time, he grew this company (Viking Installations LTD) to be one of the largest mechanical contracting companies in Calgary and by far the most creative. Ross was constantly coming up with ideas that saved money and energy on these commercial projects. In the last 10 years of his time in this business, 90 % of the work he did was design/build. He would take on contracts with no mechanical design and then hire the mechanical engineer, direct him to implement his own creative designs into the drawings and then execute the project. In 2004, he patented a system (the Sinclaire Multi-story Water Distribution System) which saved from $4,000 to $5,000 per suite on high rise condominium buildings. This was unprecedented in the plumbing business. He ended up installing this system into 10 high rise buildings in Calgary, saving an average of $1,000,000 per building. One of these buildings, the 26 story Southern Alberta Institute of Technology 650 bed residence, was heated with a novel wall heating system that saved $4,000,000 on this one building alone. It is the only wall heated high rise building in the world.
In late 2009, Ross began to study what was going on in the tidal power business and the more he looked, the more he felt that there had to be a “Better Way”. After over 30 years as a mechanical contractor, he turned over the business to some of the employees and decided to enter the tidal energy business. Ross felt that, seeing as the Archimedes screw is the most efficient way to move product or fluids from one place to the other, the opposite was also true. The moving fluid, water in this case, would transfer rotational torque to the central shaft in a very efficient way if it was designed right. He began testing his ideas in rivers and canals and found the optimal angle of orientation of the screw to the flowing water in combination with the optimal pitch of the flights. He was then able to patent these two basic aspects which translates to a very strong patent. Jupiter now owns patents in 24 countries. All the prototypes have been built by Ross and all the money has been raised by him as well.
To make complex and costly systems simple and cost effective is what Ross is very good at. He is also very good at developing these systems in an intelligent cost effective way and engage with the right team to build them. His approach to the tidal power industry is as novel as his approach to the mechanical systems in high rise buildings.
To see more on his plumbing patent, look at the first two attachments.
To see a variation on the patent utilizing the 140 degree domestic water to heat a high rise building through the walls, see the third attachment.
US Plumbing Patent20170107_13154863.pdf
The World’s First High Rise Building To Be Heated Through The Walls
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Greg R. Farrow
Chief Engineer and Head of Manufacturing
Greg grew up in Amherst, Nova Scotia. His father was the founder of Farrow Metal Works Inc. in Oxford, Nova Scotia. Greg began his career working for his father as a welder and fitter and then went on to University to become an engineer. He then worked for several companies in ever increasing responsible roles around engineering, estimating and supervising crews in manufacturing of a variety of products. In 2002, he started his own company, GRF Structural Engineering. This evolved into, not only design, but manufacturing to where GRF has a 180′ long shop with two 30 ton overhead cranes and a crew of welders and fitters. Look at the “see resume” below to understand the depth of experience Greg has.
Greg met Ross in 2020 during the covid pandemic and they got to know and appreciate each other’s skill sets and accomplishments. Greg saw the merits of the Jupiter technology and was very interested to get involved. In Dec. 2022, Greg agreed to take Jupiter shares and sell GRF to Jupiter Hydro so as to go full time into the manufacture of tidal turbines. Down the road Greg will design and build a Jupiter manufacturing plant in Scotland to take advantage of the huge potential in and around the UK, Ireland and France. By building these turbines in house, Jupiter controls the quality and protects the worldwide IP. Handling the process from start to finish is also the most cost effective way to compete and constantly reduce costs. Also see an interview with Greg which is part of the video at the bottom of Home Page.
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Ismael Bandao
Procurement & Project Management
Ismael is an experienced professional with a strong background in procurement , project management, contract negotiation and building cross-functional teams for Billion Dollar Projects. He recently immigrated to Canada from Brazil and spent time working with Greg from GRF Structural Engineering. He will be invaluable when we begin doing projects in Brazil on the Amazon River. This will begin after building and proving our 7.5 foot diameter screw turbines in the Bay of Fundy.
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Dr. Maximilian Heres & Jeff Foote
Max and Jeff are the Founders of Loci Robotics which is a company on the leading edge of engineering, designing the required printing equipment and printing large scale projects. Look through their website to see the projects they completed (www.locirobotics.com). We, at Jupiter, intend to work with them to, first of all, print our 7.5 foot diameter screws which will be tested in the Bay of Fundy. We then will work with them to build a purpose built facility in which we can 3D print our 25 foot diameter screw. Also see the interview with Jeff on the video on the Home Page.