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

no

[fmobus]

we don't need light in our basements!! FP?

Re:no

[chiok]

I think you meant "we don't need light in our parents' basements!!" This is slashdot after all.

Very cool

[JasonBee]

In the Australian interior (Coober Pedy and Lightning Ridge) they build many homes undergound...thsi kinds of thing would be perfect. Natural air conditioning and natural light sources.

Re:Very cool

[melikamp]

If we cover the Earth with enough quality fiber, we can probably channel sunlight 24/7 from the light to the dark side. I cannot imagine if that is ever going to become practical, but it sure sounds great for the environment.

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...

Skylights are nice

[ReformedExCon]

Even when raining, the outdoor light feels much more comfortable and natural than indoor incandescent lightbulbs. I imagine the idea has been around since Gog the Hut Thatcher fell through one of his creations and the hut owners just left the hole in the roof.

Nowadays, they've got a nice system where the light is guided through a reflective tube that can be directed to any room in the house.

http://www.solatube.com/

It was only natural that the techonology would progress to where we are splitting the sunshine into fiber optics and redirecting them all over the house. However, 2007 is a pretty long way off for what seems to be a relatively simple application of existing technologies.

Photonic Storage?

[Doc Ruby]

Is there any way to store the photons in sunlight? Not convert them to electrons, then reemit them, but "trap" the photons in some medium, then emit them at some arbitrary later date? Without transforming some amount of their energy to heat or other mechanical energy. For retransmission later, like when the sun goes down.

Maybe a nanomaze of fiber, a few wavelengths in diameter, twisting its way around inside a cubic centimeter? If such a "photon trap" were millions of meters in length, it might be able to absorb photons for a while, before the first ones trapped finally made their way around the loop to the surface, during which time the trap could be closed (with a mirror, cycling the photons through the circuit until it was opened again. Or maybe an input window that's mirrored only on the inside, trapping photons continuously, until another mirrored facet is removed. Or a spiral maze of MEMs mirrors which send light around the cycle, until one is tilted away from the cycle, towards the output.

Is there any kind of work on "photonic storage"?

Re:Filter the UV rays

[shobadobs]

RTFS!

God. Why does stupidity exponentiate when people desire to get an early post on a story?

That's why it's called 'natural light'

[maxrate]

There is a reason why it's called 'natural light', because it's natural, not artificial.

I moved my office from a building where we had NO windows. Productivity has gone up tremendously. We don't feel as worn out at the end of the day, and we don't feel like we missed out on anything.

I saw this on the Discovery channel, and it's fantastic for commerical space as you can distribute 'natural' light all over the office where windows can't be located. It saves on energy use as well. As yes, there are UV filters.

I wish it was a little more affordable, i'd do it in a heart beat.

Freakin Laser Beams

[maxrate]

Blast a thinkgeek laser beam in reverse from your cubicle fiber port and wake up some alien race.

During the cold war...

[Rhinobird]

During the cold war there was much competition between American and Russian office productivity. The Americans spent millions delevoping a system to direct sunlight into buildings. It was awesome in its capabilities. The sun tracker used very little energy, the interior of the building was laced with miles of fiber optic cabling. All in all a wonder of modern engineering triumph.

When face with a similar problem, the Soviets used a "window".

The author also wrote about alien technology!

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Not to bash this solar lighting system or anything, but the author of the article is a bit of a nutcase-- she wrote a whole article about how we're all doomed because of the impending Magnetic Field Revesal, and another article about a scientist was killed in a conspiratorial fashion because of his "new energy" discoveries, which apparently came from space aliens.

So take this article with a big grain of alien-free salt.

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...

Let's do some maths.

[Anonymous Coward]

$US8000 for one of these systems, capable of lighting 1000 square feet. That's $US8 per square foot; I'm Australian, so let's work in Australian dollars: around $10 Australian per square foot. A typical fluorescent light bulb (to replace an incandescent bulb) uses 15 watts of electricity.

Looking at my latest electricity bill, I'm charged 13 cents (Australian, roughly) per kilowatt hour. Ten dollars is 77 kilowatt hours; that's equivalent to running one of those things for 5,000 hours (again, roughly).

Working period is 8 hours a day, five days a week -- forty hours a week. 5,000 hours is therefore 125 weeks, or about two and a half years. Multiply that figure by the number of square feet a standard bulb can illuminate (it'd be, what, about 50 square feet at a guess?), and you have a break-even point of 125 years.

If they're replacing incandescent bulbs (which use four times the electricity), break even comes down to about 30 years.

Points to consider:

1. My pricing for electricity is residential rates. Industrial and commercial rates are probably different. Anybody have solid figures?
2. I'm guessing with the 50 square feet per bulb. If a bulb can light more area, the time to breakeven increases accordingly. If less, it decreases.
3. Businesses typically use fluorescent tubes, not bulb replacements. I don't know how much energy those use, nor how much area they can light.
4. Does this price include installation? If not, there's an added expense before break even is reached.
5. You'll also need other lighting to supplement this system on badly overcast days, and at night, reducing the payoff.

The price will have to drop a bit based upon my back-of-the-envelope calculations before this becomes viable. If anybody has better figures than the ones I've given, please, speak up -- I'm genuinely curious. In particular, I don't know how much electricity costs a business in the USA; that is the single biggest factor in determining payoff time.

Coober Pedy, AUSTL: 29s01, 134e43

[weighn]

sorry I couldn't see it on maps.google - probably due to the buildings all being underground :)

Yeah... as if windows were out of fashion.

[Vo0k]

You know, using thermonuclear fusion to desalinize water in oceans and use it for watering agricultural terrains is pretty old too. It's called rain.