Hilo is much more than just a smart home service. The Hydro-Québec subsidiary offers a solution designed to enable its customers to consume and manage their energy use more intelligently during peak demand periods. As the first virtual power plant in Quebec, Hilo orchestrates its customers’ energy requirements in order to free up electrical capacity to respond to the needs of the grid. Each customer thereby contributes to reducing future energy needs, which liberates energy to be used instead for the electrification of transportation, avoids or delays the need to invest in development of the power grid and reduces the use of less clean forms of energy during winter. It’s win-win for everyone!

From thermostats to switches to smart plugs, Hilo offers a range of connected products for managing homes more efficiently through a single mobile application, even when customers aren’t at home. Plus, the Hilo solution is compatible with the voice assistants Google Assistant and Alexa from Amazon.

Hilo is also about challenges. Each winter, it offers customers up to 30 challenges during peak periods. The idea is for customers to accept a reduction in the temperature of their homes and their overall energy consumption for a few hours. Since challenges are handled automatically, nothing could be easier! For each successful challenge, Hilo customers receive cash rewards.

Since the spring of 2022, Hilo has also offered simple, reliable technological solutions to businesses looking to automate and manage their buildings’ energy requirements. Other products and services will be added in the future, particularly in the areas of electric transportation, smart storage and self-generated solar.