Last month, we kicked off our new Employee Spotlight series, dedicated to celebrating and highlighting the EVLO team’s unique talents, achievements, and perspectives. This month, we’re highlighting Jérémie Lepage, Principal Sales Engineer, and his impressive career and history at the organization.
Q: What is your expertise?
A: I’m the Principal Sales Engineer at EVLO. I analyze the BESS market’s expectations and requirements from a technical point of view and provide recommendations and guidelines to different branches of the company, particularly our sales and development team. Ultimately, it’s my job to ensure that current and future iterations of EVLO’s products exceed market expectations, commercially and technically, which isn’t always the easiest task. In a rapidly maturing industry like energy storage, new technologies and competitors emerge daily, requiring me to stay vigilant and keep myself on my toes! However, this ever-changing landscape excites me and drives me to help EVLO push the boundaries of innovation.
Q: What is your professional background?
A: I started working in the electrical distribution world when I was 12 years old, helping my father as an electrical estimator for contractors. This early exposure didn’t just teach me various crucial industry skills; it laid the foundation for my energy storage and renewables journey. I pursued a career as an electrical engineer in consulting, where I was engrossed in hydro-electrical power plants, wind farms, and switchyard projects. Afterward, I spent a decade honing my skills in low and medium-voltage products as a specifier with the largest electrical distribution manufacturer, where I provided crucial support to consulting firms. Hands down, the best part of that role was getting parachuted into catastrophic project situations to remedy technical challenges on an ad hoc basis.
Q: Why is energy storage so important?
A: There are many reasons why energy storage is critical, but perhaps the most obvious is that it’s paramount to an effective transition to renewable energy. Solar and wind, while effective, low-cost energy sources, require some assistance due to their inconsistent and unpredictable output. In Québec, we already have some of the largest “batteries” in the world through our massive reservoirs, but our grid suffers from the high cost of adding additional power production. Energy storage can help here too. By allowing us to store vast amounts of energy when existing power plants are underutilized and discharge it during peak demand hours, we can meet the grid’s needs at a fraction of the cost. Energy storage also provides a range of other services to the grid, from enhanced resiliency to frequency and voltage regulation.
Q: What is your passion?
A: All my life, I’ve been an innovator, reinventing the world around me in my head and sometimes literally — I have a patented invention of my own! It’s fair to say that driving progress is, and always has been, important to me. In my previous life, when I was with a company using 100-year-old technology, I didn’t fell included in the worlds transition into clean energy. Remedying this was important to me, so I sought to join a business that was innovating and revolutionizing how we think about energy — like EVLO. Having been a part of the journey of developing new technology — there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. Ultimately, I feel very at home being part of EVLO’s innovation team and helping pave the way for a greener, more sustainable future.
Q: What do you like about your job?
A: There’s an urgency to our work at EVLO; failing simply isn’t an option. As the race to the cleanest, safest, and cheapest megawatts possible continues to accelerate, ensuring Canada and Québec are competitively positioned will be critical to our environmental, economic, and political futures. I also enjoy that every day with EVLO brings new challenges. Just as our team begins to feel as though we’ve seen it all — that no customer requirement can surprise us — we’re proven wrong. Energy storage is the 21st century’s biggest gold rush and has attracted the most extraordinary talents and minds, meaning we have to fight to the bone for every inch of market share. It’s a lot of work, but it’s gratifying.
Q: Why did you choose EVLO?
A: With an industry as promising as energy storage, there are a lot of different players on the market. Most of them, however are primarily focused on cost and density. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads them to compromises that are not in the BESS industry’s or environment’s best interest. EVLO, on the other hand, is unique, taking a more integrated approach that places utilities’ interests, namely safety and quality, as top priorities. EVLO isn’t just concerned with driving high sales — we prioritize driving innovation in quality and reliability and are actively reimagining the BESS market. This is crucial for me, as I need to believe in a product to be able to sell it. EVLO also has a deep relationship with Hydro-Québec, North America’s largest clean energy provider, allowing us to leverage a cornucopia of industry expertise.
Q: What contributes most to EVLO’s ability to provide a safer product to customers?
A: As a utility subsidiary that works for other utilities, safety is part of EVLO’s DNA. Our goal isn’t to be the cheapest BESS provider on the market but the safest. And it’s from this unwavering commitment that our passive ventilation mechanism was born. We’ve designed a BESS that meets current NFPA855 fire and safety guidelines and guarantees resiliency, even after losing all auxiliary power sources and communication. That achievement is a testament to the EVLO team’s innovative capacity.
Q: What are your future goals for EVLO?
A: I want EVLO to have an outsized impact on the evolution of energy storage, so while our latest BESS system EVLOFLEX represents a significant milestone, it will by no means represent our endgame. We are committed to pushing the boundaries of energy storage technology, and we’re just getting started. We will stay one step ahead of the rapidly evolving energy storage market, anticipating its needs and delivering innovative solutions that surpass expectations. Simultaneously, we are dedicated to leading thought leadership efforts to drive the energy transition forward. We’re all in the struggle against climate change together, so if there’s ever been a time for radical collaboration — it’s now.
Q: Can you share a proud moment from your time at EVLO?
A: EVLO’s latest, safest, and most powerful BESS — the EVLOFLEX — was something I proudly played a crucial role in developing. I even came up with the name! When building off our previous design, the EVLO1000, our team realized that we needed to boost on-site energy density to take our product to the next level. I was part of the team resolving this technical dilemma and couldn’t have asked for a better experience. It was extremely gratifying to work alongside a large team of devoted and passionate technical experts on the same goal — and finally, achieving it was a massive accomplishment.
