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December 20, 1996

SHEC Labs Incorporates

SASKATOON, Canada: SHEC Labs - Solar Hydrogen Energy Corporation (SHEC Labs) today announced its incorporation to actively pursue research on hydrogen production technologies.

J. Thomas Beck, the founder of SHEC Labs has been doing hydrogen and renewable energy research on a part time basis for a number of years. The incorporation of SHEC Labs starts a full time dedicated research effort with the objective of achieving commercial and cost effective renewable energy and hydrogen production technologies.

Tom was born on December 5, 1957 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His parents were Canadian born. His grandparents emigrated from Germany in the early 1900's.

Tom spent his early years growing up on a grain farm. After moving to the city he would still spend his summer holidays during his grade school and high school years helping out on his grandparents' farm. He was no stranger to hard work and enjoyed it. He enjoyed the busy pace of the harvest, and developed a strong work ethic. He found the farm a place to do things, and the city boring in comparison. The farm had a machine shop and Tom spent many hours building various contraptions as he was growing up.

As Tom became older, he took an interest in electronics and energy systems. He had a strong interest in renewable energy systems, but there were no career opportunities in renewable energy at the time. While Tom was growing up he said, "You can do anything with electronics", and chose a career path in that area.

Tom deployed a wind generator above his parents garage while still in high school and had built a number of electrolyzers. He also built his first thermal chemical hydrogen generator while still in grade 12. Efficiencies were extremely low and seemed impractical at the time. "If only the efficiencies could be brought up, it could become the most economical means to produce hydrogen from sunlight in the future", Tom had said.

During his high school years, Tom spent all his money from part time jobs to fund his basement laboratory. Tom graduated from DeVry Technical Institute in 1977 with a diploma in Electronics and Computer Controls. With that he went off to work for CNCP Telecommunications. Even after he bought his own house, his preoccupation was with the basement lab.

Tom jumped at the opportunity to work for a renewable energy company which had started in his home town of Regina, SK. He was in charge of designing and building the electronic controls and testing apparatus for both active solar heating systems and wind power systems. He was so excited with the opportunity to work in renewable energy, that he invested part of his salary back into the company.

He had designed a Delta-T controller for the Eutectic Salt heat storage for solar heated homes as well as a microprocessor based control system which controlled the entire solar heating system, storage, and backup heating. It was the first control of its kind in the world.

He also designed an air tight, electronically actuated air damper which incorporated a low cost electronic braking circuit for squirrel cage motors. Tom also designed and built a computer data acquisition system for a solar house using the TRS-80 Model 1 computer, which was a state of the art consumer computer at the time. He also designed a testing platform and instrumentation for a wind turbine. Tom says "To make our own wind, the platform was mobile. We drove the platform at varying speeds to obtain the wind speed we desired to acquire power/torque curves for the wind turbines".

Unfortunately, this company did not survive. Tom went to work in various industries in telecommunications and manufacturing automation. He developed and managed development teams for products for Video On Demand fiber optic Television, Machine Automation, CNC systems. He was only able to work on his hydrogen dream on a part time basis.

A number of electrolyzers were built over the years and attempts at improving the thermal water splitting process were made. It was not until a moment of inspiration in the summer of 1996, that Tom thought of a way to separate hydrogen and oxygen as they are produced to prevent recombination. This epiphany could make his process economically viable. Tom gathered his family and friends to help spread the word of his "inspiration" and found enough interested investors to launch SHEC Labs in December of that year. A formal research effort was started.

Mr. Beck received a High Tech Entrepreneur Award for Innovation and Scientific Breakthrough from KPMG Peat Marwick Thorne in 1990. He is also on the advisory committee of the University of Regina Engineering Faculty. BMO Nesbitt Burns, a major Canadian brokerage firm, nominated Mr. Beck for Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000.