Age 34
In 2014, Jake Kubiski and his then-girlfriend (now wife) vacationed in Costa Rica, which at the time was converting its electrical grid entirely to renewable energy, installing solar, wind, hydro and even geothermal from the local volcano.
Kubiski, an electrician working in the oil and gas industry, was intrigued. “I was sitting on the beach in Costa Rica looking into the Alberta solar industry,” he says. “There were only a few players in the game at that point.”
When he came home, he reached out to those companies, but they weren’t hiring. So he took solar courses through his electricians’ union, then he struck out on his own. “I said, ‘Screw it, I’m going to start a business,’” he says.
That business, Kuby Energy, has since grown into one of the province’s largest solar installers. It does small residential arrays to large commercial and industrial ones. Kuby adds batteries for off-grid installations for grid-connected clients who want the option to be grid-independent, and Kubiski says the market for EV chargers is growing.
“It’s just the tip of the iceberg with electric vehicles right now,” he says. “It’s the same with solar. You look at how many homes we still have to do in Alberta. It’s a big hill to climb.
He takes solar power into his own hands
This article appears in the November 2022 issue of Edify
