Slashdot Mirror
Pumping Sunlight Into Homes
ByronScott sends a snippet from Inhabitat that begins "What if you could light your entire building using no electricity or artificial lights – but just the natural light from our favorite star, the Sun? Enter the Sundolier, a powerful sunlight transport system that's like putting a solar robot on your roof to pump sunlight indoors. The manufacturer claims a single Sundolier unit can provide enough light to illuminate a 1,000-2,500 sq. ft. area [93-232 sq. m] without any other sources." The company's website is a bit thin on details, such as what happens on cloudy days, or how many days of sunlight per year on average are needed for the device to perform acceptably.
It's thin on the details because there are no details. This is just a flexible aluminum tube and a diffuser. The only thing different about this than the kits you can get at Menards is the big collector array which tracks the sun.
There's no solar panels in this system. On cloudy days, you use electric lighting.
Our Sundolier delivers sunlight so effectively that electric lighting can be turned off when the sun is out offering excellent opportunities to save electricity while reducing heat generation through cool indirect daylighting.
There's no mention anywhere, not in the inhabitat.com article, nor the companies website, that this does anything on cloudy days.
This has been done in the 3rd world for ages. You drill a hole in your roof, mount a 2L soda bottle filled with water (and two cap-fulls of bleach to keep it clean and clear), and stick an old black plastic film canister overtop of the white lid to keep the plastic from degrading. The video of these in use is amazing. Sadly however it only works when the sun is up - which is most of the workday (12 hrs typically) in the tropics.
Watch it in action. Wow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zMAWztZ6TI
moox. for a new generation.