Fiber Optics Bring the Sun Indoors

Sterling D. Allan writes "Fiber optics transmit light, so why not take the light from outside and transmit it inside? According to an exclusive story at PESN, that is what Tennessee company, Sunlight Direct, is now doing. Their 4-foot-diameter solar dish will light 1000 square feet inside -- minus the harmful UV rays -- rendering a more natural lighting feel, which can be hybridized with florescent and possibly LED lighting to provide a constant light level, though the tone changes with the level of light outside. The GPS-based sun-tracking mechanism uses very little energy. Now you can save electricity, cut on heat emissions by incandescent, and improve the feel of your work environment. Beta testing began in June. Product expected in the market in 2007."

Comments

Sounds like advertisement to me

[helioquake]

A guy who works at "Pure Energy System" posts exclusive article posted on PESN (Pure Energy System News)? Isn't that the same as a free ad?

Not that anything wrong with that...

Re:Sounds like advertisement to me

[NanoGator]

" Isn't that the same as a free ad?"

Funny how this question didn't come up while Slashdot was ooo'ing and aaah'ing over the Serenity teaser.

step in the right direction

[porksoda]

now slap some fucking soil and grass and trees on those concrete roofs and we're in business.

I'll keep my windows thanks.

[sdfad1]

Errr, wait a minute, something's not right here. First we build a structure- wind, quake, water, sun, (and even fire)-proof, then we build another gadget to bring the sun into our buildings. I'm no architect, but the buildings we can see all around us are convincing proof that we can ensure natural sunlight reaches most parts of the interior of our buildings - we have sun roofs, open areas, North facing buildings (in the Southern hemisphere), even simple windows.

This gadget is just a bunch of boys' toy, and will be forgotten in a few years. I suggest we pay more attention to the architects who are building our environments to ensure we never need such devices in the first place. A bit of design in the beginning saves plenty of effort later. For example, you won't need to crack your brains figuring out safety regulations, building codes and installation hassles for a fibre optics light and heat guide...

Re:Old News

[plover]

There's also a "more traditional" system that I've been seeing at the Home and Garden shows for a few years now. It's a small (about 8" diameter) clear dome 'skylight' mounted in the roof. It caps an ordinary round sheet metal duct that leads straight down into the home. The ductwork is lined with a reflective mylar sheet, making it a mirrored pipe. The inside end is pointed at a translucent diffuser. From inside the house, it looks like an ordinary recessed can light.

Ultra low tech (no fibers) but it produces very nicely colored light in an interior room. I thought they were too pricey, though. Then I saw this article, where they want $8000! Wow.

GPS Tracking?

[uberdave]

Why would they need GPS tracking? It's not like the building is going to move. I suppose they are using the time/date signal to compute where point the dish. Good luck fumbling around in the dark when the military scrambles the GPS in response to a terrorist threat though. Why don't they simply use a set of phototransistors instead, no computing required?

Re:Geomagnetic reversal happens, but aliens don't

[bm_luethke]

One can pretty much conclusivly say that we aren't that fucked - why you ask? Well, it has happened so many times in the Earths history (while we had life on the planet) that if we are "fucked" we wouldn't be here discussing it.

This reminds me of what we were taught in middle school and high school (I graduated in 1993). That the entire lifecycle of many plants were dependant on the honey bee to polenate and continue to breed in a diverse enough fashion to live. If they died off then the plants couldn't breed, plants would die, oxygen would not be produced, and we would all die, or at least become a desert as the plants couldn't breed. Now, since we still had honey bees I couldn't say this was wrong, though I figured that if the entire ecosystem depended on a single species we wouldn't have made it to now and was quite sceptical.

Well, in about 2000 there was a mutation in some type of bacteria that pretty much eliminated the honey bee in a large part of the south east US (just now recovering from it somewhat, since 2000 I've seen less than 10 honey bees, 6 of them this year - typically we would not really want to walk barefoot for fear of stepping on them). Now, since I am still sitting here typing this I can assure you that all of our plants didn't die. Since I still see plenty of clover and flowers I can figure that the whole world didn't depend on the life of the honey bee. Seems we were either lied too or thier research was vastly flawed.

I highly suspect (but because it hasn't occured I can't say for sure) that an event that has happened thousands upon thousands of times will not cause the total collapse of the entire ecosytem and mass destruction (unless, of course, you can show it did everytime this occured).

Personally I wouldn't worry about it too much even were it to happen in our lifetime, but what ever floats your boat I guess. Maybe I'm wrong and this time the timid ant-mouse (or whatever species, genus, or family is key) will die off and that is the key to our entire ecosystem and we will all die. I can't say you are wrong until that event happens, until then I will look to the past and be reassured.