Quebec has identified more than a million lakes, 130,000 watercourses of which 4,500 are rivers. Quebec holds 2% of the earth’s fresh water… in short Quebec is water.
For all these reasons and for many others (Foundation One Drop, Code Love, etc), we have been very curious to learn more about the IDENERGIE startup and specifically by its President Pierre Blanchet.
Pierre spent part of his childhood in Congo and travelled to many countries around the world such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, South Africa and even Pakistan. These trips have given him a hands-on experience and he has seen first-hand the problems of electricity faced by these populations, which have profound consequences on the conditions of life. After a “technical degree in electronics” at the Edouard Montpetit General and Vocational College he continued his studies in electronics engineering at the ÉTS of Montreal. His desire to make practical and effective solutions increased over the years.
However, it was during the course of his Masters in renewable energies, still at the ÉTS, that his dream began to materialize. “I had the idea of an affordable river turbine during my thesis on renewable energies. After that, I wanted to find a new solution to one of the biggest problems of the century: create access to green and limitless electricity for everyone. This was the beginning of Idenergie. Gilles Trottier and Denis Bastien joined me in my quest to develop a new way of producing energy with a single objective: make it efficient, simple and green! At the beginning we took baby steps, we ran into major obstacles, but we finally made it. Now, we’ve come to the finish line: marketing!” Indeed, for 3 years now, Pierre and the team at Idenergie worked hard in order to make this solution a reality. It took all these years to obtain a working product. So far, no company has managed to create a turbine which uses the river current and allows it to be used as an energy source in the same way as the sun and the wind.
After 3 prototypes, Pierre and his team have managed to develop the first river turbine that allows users to produce their own electricity from the flow of a river nearby. Today, Pierre a born entrepreneur and gifted with an incomparable determination is president of Idenergie and chief of research and development. Its tasks included the development of electrical and electronic technologies.
Pierre will give a talk next october during the KWS Forum at Usine C.