Hear from our crew about what it’s like working with a world-class team on the next generation of battery energy storage products.

Daniel Smith is a Senior Mechanical Engineer. He brings a wealth of experience in packaging electronics and works designing the mechanical and thermal solutions for Relectrify products. In his spare time he loves mountain biking — you might find him at the Yarra Ranges National Park! 

What initially drew you to Relectrify as a place to work?

The renewable energy industry itself. I want to feel like what I’m working on is a net positive for the world. Before I took the job at Relectrify, I was deciding between this job and another within a totally different industry. I hadn’t particularly thought about moving to renewables, but when I read the company values, I just got a good gut feeling. I was just inspired by the potential to make a real difference in the world and work on some really exciting projects.

Can you share a memorable moment or project you’ve worked on at Relectrify?

Since I started at Relectrify nearly a year ago, the real highlight for me has been working on the Trilogy –  the project that is productising the new generation of our CellSwitch technology.  It may even be the highlight of my whole career so far! We started working on Trilogy with a small team and then very quickly we had nearly everybody working on it. We  developed a prototype for a whole new generation of battery energy storage products. It was a huge departure mechanically from what we’d historically been working on and I think it was the starting point for turning our technology into a product. It’s really motivating to see how far we’ve come. It all started with an idea on a whiteboard and three months later, it’s a real thing — and the whole team has bought something to the project. 

What opportunities for innovation have you had at Relectrify that you might not find elsewhere?

As a company, Relectrify values innovation really highly compared to everywhere else I’ve worked. We have difficult and unique design challenges which require novel and extremely innovative solutions. Companies throw around the word ‘innovative’ all the time, but I feel like we really embody that here. We’re actually working on things that no one else is really doing in our industry. 

Innovation is well and truly encouraged here. For instance, not every idea is going to be a good one, but you have to try it to know for sure, and learn from your mistakes. Some places don’t allow you to do that but I feel like we have a safe space to try new things here. Ideas that haven’t worked have always led us to something that is better than the original idea. 

We do set our goals really high and we know that sometimes we’ll come up short, but it’s ok because you’re still somewhere that’s really great and you can be really proud of your work. Not only do you get to work on what you’re good at, you get to work on what you’re passionate about.

How would you describe the team culture at Relectrify? 

The thing that sticks out most to me about working on our team is that we’re reasonably well aligned moving toward one goal. It’s not like three different teams looking out for themselves. People don’t say things like ‘that’s not in my job description.’ People are really willing to help you out even if it’s well within their right to say ‘not my problem.’ 

I think the team is so willing to help each other out because we actually set aside time every week to just chat and get to know each other. We have this ritual, an actual calendared event, called ‘Friday Social.’ We just catch up with people, eat free food and we mostly don’t talk about work. You see your team everyday but you don’t usually know what they’re doing on the weekend or in their free time. There are a lot of interesting people here and it’s fascinating to hear about their hobbies. I’ve found that a ton of us really love cycling so it’s pretty great to nerd out about that.