Here Comes the Sun

The math doesn’t add up for Mark Schuetz.

It hasn’t for years.

The mechanical engineer began his career in the late 1970s as the country weathered an energy crisis and gas shortages.

Back then, groups of college students were taking on such projects as human-propelled flight, while utility companies were building huge reflector farms in the southwest to harness solar energy. The crises passed, though, and most businesses and innovators turned their attentions elsewhere.

But Schuetz maintained an interest in energy and efficiency. Then three years ago, the world’s energy supply tightened again.

He cites analysts’ predictions that new demand for energy will grow twice as fast as new supply in the next few decades. China’s insatiable industrial appetite will consume more fossil fuels with less output than similar facilities in other, more efficient countries.

“We’re going to have an energy crisis,” Schuetz says. “And it’s going to be driven by China.”

For almost 20 years, Replex Plastics, the Mount Vernon company where Schuetz is president, has made curved mirrors to guide cars around blind curves in parking garages, to cover surveillance cameras and to help school bus drivers know when children are clear of the vehicles.

But Schuetz saw something more. While other companies had cornered the market making large mirrors for solar farms, there was a growing need for specialized reflective surfaces. And changing his current product line to meet that demand was easier than expected. He just needed to turn the mirrors inside out — from convex to concave.

He searched for small companies and researchers in need of small reflectors for their projects.

“Even though it’s been around for 30 years or more, it’s still an embryonic industry,” Schuetz says of the solar business. “Where can we take that know-how?

“It’s notif butwhen this industry is going to take off. We’d like to be part of it when it does.”

Abdul-Majeed Azad, an associate professor in the University of Toledo’s chemical engineering department, was one of the first to enlist Replex’s help. There, a student wanted to produce hydrogen gas using sunlight as an energy source. Replex built a 42-inch curved, reflective dish that the researchers could manually wheel into position. Azad nicknamed it “Caveman-1” because of its simple design that focused sunlight onto a quartz tube.

“From the moment I explained it, he got the idea and jumped onto it,” Azad says of Schuetz. “And the very first thing he made, it worked. It worked too well.”

They had hoped the mirror could generate a beam reaching 600 degrees Celsius. They got 1,300.

“Cardboard will catch fire in no time,” Azad said. “It could melt steel plates. We did that, and it was great fun.”

Since then, Replex has worked with several companies to produce the components needed for various projects. One grew out of the NASA Glenn facility, another collected sunlight with a reflector to bring natural daylight into buildings.

Replex is still working on producing its own complete system. The aim is to produce one that homeowners and utilities outside of the Sunbelt region of the Southwest and California can use. But Schuetz says the company is happy to find a secure spot in the supply chain for other businesses as the market sorts itself out.

“It mitigates the risk a lot, in a sense,” he says. “We’re betting on 50 companies instead of betting on one.

“Realistically? Ten years from now, 40 out of the 50 won’t be around anymore, but the 10 who are might be gigantic. Hopefully we’ll be a long-term player.”