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Prism Glass Windows Making a Comeback
Steve Daley writes "Prism window glass like Luxfer was big back in the 19th century, but now it seems to be making a high-tech comeback in Japan, where several companies are commercializing similar technology that gets enough natural light into factories and offices to do away with electric lighting. It's easy on the pocket and the planet."
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This should cut back significantly on the amount of vampire activity in dark, corporate areas.
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According to TFA, an install of this fixture capable of lighting a 10x10 room (on a bright day) costs on the order of $5,000. I know the plan is to make the money back in energy savings over the long run, but compared to the relatively small and cheap Fluorescent light you need to light a 10x10 room, it's going to take a very long time to make your money back, even if the cost of energy goes up by a factor of 10 tomorrow, especially if you only turn the light on when you are actually in the room.
I read the internet for the articles.
at $4800 for a 10 sq m, I dont think this technology can make it to home use and offices. Further, the lightening is non-uniform making it difficult for working. Ofcourse, with a greater adoption, the prices may come down but..
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There are a lot of advantages of natural light over fluorescent in terms of productivity and employee satisfaction. I don't know if you're talking $10,000 worth of advantage, but it is a factor.
Lucky for us companies tend to want to have the lights on all the time so it is not a big deal. also, HP shut off half the lights in one if its call centers for 8 hours during the dead of night to saver money. The result, multiple thousand dollar savings PER MONTH. So $5k will pay off quickly in the summer for companies using these.
Maybe, but one is a permanent solution and the other makes you waste resources over and over.
Preview is a good thing. It would have saved me from all those spelling errors if I hadn't been in such a hurry.
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It's not a fair comparison if the quality of the light is important to you.
The light is way better than an el cheapo flourescent, especially if color matters to you at all. Or if spraying mercury in the room when the bulb breaks does. So plenty of people might be willing to take the penalty.
Obviously that depends somewhat on how sunny your locale is, though.
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Gee... I knew I loved this old house for some reason :) lots of glass windows and tall ceilings. No Luxfer prisms, but lots of stained glass and multiple large windows per room. Effectively we use almost no artificial light during daylight hours (except in the kitchen - tacked onto the house in 1910 or so). Similarly, we don't need air conditioning well into late June here in Illinois due to the way the house was built (and creative use of basement and attic doors).
Where I work, those effing Vampires would just use SPF 50 and make some lowpaid grunt bring the 55 gallon drum of it up the stairs to their office.
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This is nothing new at all. Companies have been making stuff like this for decades. This is not going back to some forgotten technology. For crying out loud, look in the back of any Popular Mechanics from the last twenty years and you will see ads for this kind of thing along with the lawn mower hovercrafts and folding boats.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I don't know... when you consider all the costs of illuminating 900+ square feet of space, a $5,000 one time cost to get light isn't bad, especially considering:
- electricity during the middle of the day is at peak usage and cost
- electrical lights (even fluorescent) warm up the room, increasing climate control demands
Taking those items into account, you wind up with a good case for implementing it, not to mention the fact that big businesses love having unique things that they can brag about to customers and potential clients.
On the [plus side, and Orcs complexion looks better with natural lighting...sorry, when I see 10x10 room I naturally assume there will be an Orc in it.
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Uhm. Lets do the math and see truely how bad it is. I did RTFA article and according to TFA it is 4800$ / 10Sq Ft
Lets say your factory was a small 100 Sq/Ft (The factory idea comes from TFA)
Assuming it scales on cost that's 48,000$ USD
We will figure it takes 100watts of fluorescent per 10 Sq/Ft room or 1kw for 100 Sq/Ft.
Now it's a factory and since Japan is known for it's work hours we will say 10 hours per day.
We will use 15cents per Kw/hr. It might be higher or lower, it depends on the area but average as of 2006 was roughly 10cents
10 hours x 1kw or 10kw/hrs a day = 1.50$
Lets say the Japanese work 360 days(we'll give em some days off)..
We get 1.50$ x 360 days = 540$ a year to run your lights
540$ / 48,000 = 88.889 years to pay off the windows at those rates.
So in the end it is worse than 10x the cost given you want to pay these babies off in 5 years.
Anon Coward
Consider the prism apprach in particular. How much more is it going to cost to cool the office in the summer? How much more to heat in the winter? Plus how good is it going to be for light in the winter period if the winters are darker and cloudy.
an install of this fixture capable of lighting a 10x10 room (on a bright day) costs on the order of $5,000.
This involves very low tech... No fiber-optics, no nanoscale materials, no sun-tracking servos. Just a giant fish-eye lens on the roof, shiny tubes for light distribution, and prisms (an optional, and IMO silly, "feature" for those fixated on the "window" look - you can get good illumination a lot easier by using a ceiling-mounted diffuser box).
If not a total flop, you can expect to see clones at a tenth the price within a few months.
True, but we're not talking 5k. This is 5k PER Window. It would probably take upwards of 10 years to even come close to paying for itself.
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Put a large lens on the roof to focus a large amount of sun light and pipe it through the building. Split the beam along the way to distribute light to different areas.
Irises can be installed in various places to control intensity depending on user preferences and how intense the sun is at the moment. The irises can be controlled automatically and it will still be more efficient than using electric lights.
How do you keep the concentrated beam of light from starting a fire?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
How do you keep the concentrated beam of light from starting a fire?
Aim it at someone in Sales?
Yeah, we wouldn't like that. I personally like to have my potions well lit for all to see. :P
But if you had widespread adoption it wouldn't take long to see a real drop in electricity usage. May not save an individual business money, but from a "save the planet!" perspective it could end up being economical for society.
A big deal was made of the natural lighting system at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa when it was built 20 years ago. There's a NY Times article:
The light tumbles in from light monitors lined with Mylar, so it reflects as it bounces down into the gallery, and it is exquisite and constantly changing.
I don't exactly spend my free time hanging out there, but if I was to choose a gallery to hang out in, this would be it.
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So has the prism glass.
Nothing new here, move along...
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
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Sun tunnels pipe light in from the roof of a house to the interior ceiling.
They've been around for years, and look more practical than these things. At $229 for a 14" tunnel, and $329 for a 22" tunnel, they look a lot cheaper. There are many manufacturers, as well.
Indeed, some types of light can make me feel ill - $5000 on proper light is much less than the cost of having a worker only doing 25-50% of his or her capabilities because they aren't feeling good.
my office is about 15x8 with three two tube 4' florescent fixtures.
With regular bulbs it is knd of gloomy, but if we replace just two of the lamps with daylight bulbs the office becomes a light brighter and easy on the eyes. Additional costs $1.00.
I can't stand florescent lights, but i done right with the right color mix for lamps it looks good, and takes away the headaches. Doing it right and keeping it that way though is a bit harder though.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
But the $5k spent on a more fuel efficient car could be used to find a more efficient fuel, or that money could be spent to cure cancer, or or or or or or ...
The argument that $x could be spent better by applying it to y is almost always false when it comes to the environment. The fact remains, environmental / ecological change happens on a thousand different fronts. Imagine if we had the most fuel efficient cars possible (zero carbon footprint) yet our factories poured carcinogenic effluent into the atmosphere, our houses ran as efficiently as a dead horse and leaked heat, cold, moisture, etc.
If the technology proves to be something that can and will save money while at the same time benefiting the environment, economy of scale will come into effect and the cost will drop significantly. If not, it will fall flat like so many other things and we'll divert our attention elsewhere (like more fuel efficient cars).
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Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Garridan said it best.
Probably has to do with taxes / depreciation tables.
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Great idea, but has it been patented by M$oft?
...I want a quality date in Japan!
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
It's probably only $5,000 because of patent lawyers. It can't be that hard to build one yourself.
Wouldn't this require sunny weather to be even feasible?
am I missing something?
I know that's rare around here, but does it warrant a posting as "News for Nerds..."?
The Sun rises again.
Al Gore makes more hot air.
They might be true. They might be decent summaries of the article, but does that qualify them as "news"?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
...for patients in hospitals. When the City of Hope had their new hospital, the Helford Clinical Research Hospital, designed, one of the goals was to maximize the amount of natural light in the hospital. Lots of windows, skylights, and lobbies on all floors that are almost half glass and show a spectacular view of the Sierra Madre mountains. The result is something less clinical and alien, and something more like a hotel instead of a hospital.
I would think that heating and cooling a hospital with that huge amount of glass would be a difficult thing to do, and certainly not the most energy efficient. But the decision was made, and certainly the patients, doctors and nurses feel the difference. If a more energy efficient way can be found to bring daylight into the design of a hospital, that would be so much better.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
After the big summer-time power outage a few years ago in Eastern Canada and the US, there was a whole lot of pressure to increase power conservation. At that time, I started turning off the light in my office and only used the lights in my place when essential. I found shopping at the mall more relaxing (and I spent more) and I was more productive at work. If the Prism glass takes off and becomes affordable, I'll certainly buy one.
Otherwise, I have a few prisms I bought for $5. I won't mind if after crazy-gluing them together it makes a less-than-perfect "window". Duct tape might hold better, but letting light though could be a problem.
Having a prism screen filter would allow me to better fill my basement with the soft green glow of Slashdot. 70% on the ceiling, 20% on the floor. The remaining 10% will hit my face in a vain attempt to color my pale complexion.
That generalizes nicely: "An arbitrary statement s about x and y is almost always false for arbitrary values of x and y." Or even "Most arbitrary statements are false."
It sure sounds like you're saying "we should not use logic when it comes to spending money on the envrionment."
The fact remains, environmental / ecological change happens on a thousand different fronts.Perhaps, but that fact lends no support to your sweeping generalization.
Imagine if we had the most fuel efficient cars possible (zero carbon footprint) yet our factories poured carcinogenic effluent into the atmosphere, our houses ran as efficiently as a dead horse and leaked heat, cold, moisture, etc.In such a situation you want to put your (finite) resources where they would provide the most benefit. In fact, the only plausible way you would get into such a situation is by not doing that.
If the technology proves to be something that can and will save money while at the same time benefiting the environment, economy of scale will come into effect and the cost will drop significantly. If not, it will fall flat like so many other things and we'll divert our attention elsewhere (like more fuel efficientcars).
If you actually have unlimited resources, well, problem solved.
If you don't have unlimited resources, you must carefully select which technologies should receive the economies of scale. If you attempted to invest in all technologies simultaneously, none will be developed sufficiently to reach significant economy of scale. If you choose a sub-optimal set of technologies to scale, you will end up less-better-off, or possibly even worse-off than had you invested optimally.