CEO for a Day - McGill University student spends the day with Hydro-Québec’s President and CEO

As part of the CEO x 1 Day program, Robert Forestell, a mechanical engineering undergraduate at McGill university, was paired up for the day with Thierry Vandal, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hydro-Québec. 

On this day, Mr. Forestell attended a meeting of the employees of Hydro-Québec’s research institute (IREQ), where the main topics of discussion were the company’s business environment, transportation electrification and the importance of keeping technological innovation at the heart of the company’s activities.

Afterwards, Mr. Vandal and Mr. Forestell, accompanied by Élie Saheb, Executive Vice President – Technology, Gaétan Lantagne, interim General Manager of IREQ, and Karim Zaghib, Director – Energy Storage and Conversion, took part in the inauguration of an automatic stacker. Designed by Hitachi according to IREQ’s technical specifications, the automatic stacker will serve to manufacture soft-package lithium-ion batteries—the new industry standard—and will help push the boundaries of IREQ’s research and development work in technological innovation.

They then paid a visit to the laboratories of Esstalion Technologies Inc., a joint research and development venture created by Hydro-Québec and Sony to develop large-capacity power storage systems for power grids.