MONTREAL—Another senior executive is leaving Hilo, Hydro-Québec’s troubled smart thermostat subsidiary.

CTO David Saint-Germain “has just announced his choice to leave Hilo in order to take up other challenges, his departure will take place on March 1,” Hydro-Québec spokesperson Cendrix Bouchard wrote in an email to The Logic. Saint-Germain will take up a position at NorthStar Earth & Space, a Montreal-based satellite monitoring company, according to sources familiar with the move. Saint-Germain, who couldn’t comment at length by The Logic’s deadline but confirmed the details of his departure, was appointed Hilo CTO in February 2020. 

He is the second Hilo executive to leave in three months, underscoring the challenges faced by the subsidiary, which aims to moderate and ultimately decrease power consumption by Quebec users. 

The big promise: Hilo—a play on the French word for “small island”—launched in 2019 as “a brand of personalized products and services that would make it easy for customers to manage their energy use more efficiently and more intelligently.” Its main product, a $39.99 branded intelligent thermostat, was the lynchpin in Hilo’s plan to reduce consumption and ease pressure on Hydro-Québec’s increasingly strained network. 

The carrot: In exchange for accepting 30 temperature reduction challenges a year, Hilo customers are rewarded for every kilowatt hour they don’t use—to an average of $166 per year, according to the utility. 

The stick: Hydro-Québec floated the idea of making Hilo thermostats mandatory in all newly built homes, according to documents obtained by The Logic in 2021. Though the utility ultimately didn’t follow through, its foray into cleantech was elbows-first, according to one competitor whom Hydro attempted to buy. “We were at the due-diligence stage, but we ultimately declined to sell,” François Houde, who founded the smart thermostat company Sinopé in 2010, told The Logic in 2020. “The moment we said no, we were on a blacklist.”

A (much) smaller delivery: Hilo cites strategic and competitive reasons for not sharing information regarding its losses so far. Yet according to Le Devoir’s recent gander at internal documents, Hilo users saved far less than anticipated during demand spikes in the winter of 2021-2022—and well short of the seasonal reduction Hilo will need to reach the 621 megawatts it plans to save by 2029. (Hilo saved 14 megawatts during spikes, according to Bouchard, who said the subsidiary would hit its target of 47 megawatts in savings this winter.) Hilo also launched its smart water heater pilot program in March 2022. Bouchard said the pilot is finished, but refused to disclose information about it. 

The fallout: Hydro-Québec has sunk at least $30 million into the venture, which has bought Hilo 15 per cent of Quebec’s smart thermostat market, according to Le Devoir. “I think the jury’s still out on Hilo, to be fair. I am doubtful that they will be able to recover the money they’re putting in,” energy consultant Benoit Marcoux told The Logic in January. (Bouchard, who wouldn’t confirm the $30-million figure, said Hydro-Quebec’s investment “is in the tens of millions.”)

The latest in a long list: Saint-Germain’s departure is far from the only recent one from the public utility. Hydro-Québec CEO Sophie Brochu and executive vice-president Éric Filion both announced their departures in January, while board of directors chair Jacynthe Côté announced her intention to step down at the end of her May 2023 mandate. François Laurin left Hydro-Quebec in 2021 after serving as vice president information technology for less than a year. The utility dismissed Hilo CEO Sébastien Fournier last October, and both Carl Cassista and Frédéric Bastien left Hilo’s board of directors in 2022.