John Berton leaned against the dryer in his basement one afternoon in late September, writing down everything he needed to buy before he could disconnect from Commonwealth Edison’s power grid. In a small room a few feet away, 50 gurgling nickel-iron batteries surged with enough energy to power his entire apartment.
Fortunately, Berton’s friend Vladimir Nekola, an electrician and renewable-energy contractor, had agreed to help him finish. Berton wrote while Nekola rattled off the parts they needed: a transfer switch, a charge controller, a 16-breaker panel, a 12-breaker panel, 12 20-amp breaker switches, 20 15-amp breaker switches, three 60-amp double breakers, two breaker boxes, a 100-amp pullout disconnect, a two-inch pipe, lugs, cables, brackets, four 90-degree one-inch Greenfield connectors. Eventually the list filled an entire sheet of Berton’s legal pad. So far he’d spent “more than most people make in a year” on his solar system. He estimated the new parts would cost another $1,000.
At Kalamazoo College, Berton studied biology and botany. He loved nature, but not to the exclusion of big cities and all that they offered–especially within walking distance. He moved to Chicago in June 1977, on the day after he graduated.
One day they stumbled on a plant that was still operating. The old man who ran it told them he’d been using water to make electricity for 50 years. He gave them a tour, explaining how the force of water released by the dam rotated two turbines in a pit near the embankment. The old man then led them to a small brick building where a well-oiled generator purred, powered by the turbines. Berton was awed. Electricity had always been an invisible force he took for granted–magic in the walls. Now electricity was something you could make.
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In 1984 he and Carney bought a two-flat in Ravenswood just north of Lawrence. They gutted and rehabbed the building themselves, then rebuilt the garage. Carney faithfully read manuals, focused on details, broke everything down into steps; Berton dove right in, worked intuitively in a way he describes as “open the box, toss out the instructions, drag the thing out, and see how it works.” They clashed often but ultimately saw benefits in each other’s approach. There were times Berton wished he’d read the instructions, and times Carney was impressed by his improvisation.
He called the catalogs’ 800 numbers to consult with the people peddling the goods. Everyone told him that before he embarked on such an ambitious project he should assess his energy needs and see where he could conserve. He was already conscientious about energy use, but he saw room for improvement. He bought energy-efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs, a program to shut off computer hardware when it wasn’t in use, and a battery-operated refrigerator that used one-ninth the power of a standard model.
