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“I wasn’t sure at first,” said Chantal Cairns, nine months pregnant, standing amid boxes in the home the couple moved into a week before, in late July. “I was worried about not having enough power for everyday life. As long as I can use my curling iron, I’m okay.”

So far, so good. Power flows from 30 Heliene solar panels mounted among the blueberry bushes on the hilltop, and the house hums comfortably.

“I have always been interested in green alternatives,” said Jim, 31, plant manager at Heliene. “For myself, it was a bit of a no-brainer. To bring power from the hydro lines into where we wanted to build would have been about the same cost as it was to put in a solar system.”

The solar installation cost $50,000. “It was lots of research, lots of carrying things up this mountain,” he said. “We took down about 200 trees.”

On the plus side, “moving forward, I don’t have a hydro bill every month.”

There is one wrinkle: Sault Ste. Marie gets a lot of snow; someone will have to hike up to clear the solar panels.

“That would be my husband’s job,” Chantal said. “He will have to go up there and take the snow off so the sun can hit the solar panels.”

The boss at the solar power plant that made those solar panels is Martin Pochtaruk, 51, a native of Argentina. After studying theoretical physics, Pochtaruk spent his career at Tenaris, a steel pipe manufacturer, in Argentina, Italy, the United States and then Sault Ste. Marie. Pochtaruk’s wife, Sofia Silberberg, became a math professor at Algoma University. In 2004, Tenaris proposed to transfer Martin a fourth time.