Hilo ended its independent existence as a subsidiary to join the state corporation.
The integration of Hilo's operations, which started in January 2023 and provides home automation and energy efficiency services, is now complete, the state-owned company said.
The state-owned company says the goal of repatriating Hilo's operations is to “optimize its energy efficiency programs and ensure the complementarity of Hydro-Québec and Hilo's mobile applications.” Hilo's sales, customer service and marketing have already been taken over by Hydro-Québec.
The takeover by Hydro-Québec was finalized with technology development activities still under subsidiary responsibility.
One hundred Hilo employees will be transferred to Hydro-Québec. Hilo's repatriation was initiated in response to the subsidiary's difficult start in terms of customer recruitment and operating costs. Its first CEO, Sébastien Fournier, was replaced.
Hydro-Québec considers Hilo a virtual power plant, allowing it to calculate a peak power output of 625 megawatts a day, the equivalent of Romaine-2 production.
This goal is still far away. In the winter of 2023-2024, Hilo's 40,000 customers would have displaced a total of 100 megawatts of consumption.
