Just my opinion of course, based on playing my kin/elec defender for the last 2 years, but I don't think you really need to build for heavy recharge on a kinetics defender. You are going to be very busy with your primary as is and so you wont be standing around waiting for powers to recharge, between fulcrum shift, transfusion, the siphons, then your own contributions from your secondary you are going to be very active with just the base recharge and the boost you are getting from siphon speed. Personally the route i went with was boosts to accuracy, to hit buff, and defense. You can toss thunderstrikes into your attack powers for both accuracy and defense. Slotting your actual kinetics powers will be difficult as they do not take many sets. Doctored wounds in your transfusion is a must of course but otherwise the siphons will not give you much option for slotting. You dont have to slot heavy in your primary suprisingly which is nice since it'll let you put more slots into your pistol powers. Also when you get your alpha I slotted it with nerve for the all around accuracy boost you are going to get. nothing worse than firing off a transfusion to save the tank and it misses....Nerve Radial will boost both accuracy and defense boosts for any powers you have that takes them. Just a thought.
I have a level 42 kinetics/dual pistols defender that I love to death, but my only experience prior to him are more offensive characters: I got a fully IOed fire/fire blaster, stone/stone tank, and a partially IOed BS/WP scrapper.
I don't really know how or what to slot for kinetics. I really would like a build that focuses on extreme recharge, something I think that wouldn't be too hard with kinetics, but still... HEEEEELP!