Hydro-Québec is shutting down its battery division.
The Canadian Press has realized that the Crown company will announce later this Friday the closure of its Centre d’excellence en électrification des transports et en stockage d’énergie (CEESTE), a call that can have an effect on almost 90 folks, together with 14 non permanent technicians who can be positioned on a recall listing.
The others can be reassigned inside the firm.
The Centre of Excellence was established in 2017 following the Legault authorities’s investments within the battery sector. Since its creation, CEESTE has generated about 100 patents, most of which have expired or are about to run out.
On the time of its creation, CEESTE was one of many few analysis centres devoted to the event of battery supplies in Quebec, however many different analysis centres on this subject have emerged because the trade has grown.
As we speak, such centres will be discovered at seven universities. Certainly one of these centres, Volt-Age at Concordia College, is led by CEESTE’s former director, researcher Karim Zaghib.
LITE to take over
Extra just lately, in March 2025, the then-Minister of Financial system, Innovation, and Vitality, Christine Fréchette, introduced the creation of the Laboratoire industriel en transition énergétique (LITE), which was carefully related to Hydro-Québec. LITE will proceed the work of CEESTE, however the state-owned utility additionally intends to switch CEESTE’s belongings to the analysis ecosystem specializing in power transition and batteries.
Hydro-Québec explains this choice by the necessity to focus its analysis actions on the three essential priorities of its 2035 Motion Plan: bettering service high quality, power effectivity, and growing electrical energy technology.
CEESTE represented solely a small portion of Hydro-Québec’s analysis actions. Its essential analysis centre, the Institut de recherche en électricité du Québec (IREQ), includes two main services that make use of roughly 500 folks: the Hydro-Québec analysis centre (CRHQ) in Varennes, within the Montérégie area, and the power applied sciences laboratory (LTE) situated in Shawinigan, within the Mauricie area.
CEESTE was situated on the IREQ grounds in Varennes.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
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