Hybrid lighting

[Neil.Armstrong]

Hello,

Has anyone heard of hybrid lighting.

Its a method(I think developed in Japan) where a big silver satellite dish is place onto a roof then opric fibres tranmit the sun light and transport it to room below. I understand that this reduces lighting power consumption in large sky-scrapers.

I'm interested to use this in my house to bring sunlight into the east facing rooms. I don't have the space to install a sunpipe but maybe optic-fibres will do.

I'm interested to know if anyone has experience of this technology.

Many Thanks Neil

[John]

Try:

[John]

[meow2222]

Theres also a much simpler cheaper technology that does something similar.

the incoming reflected skylight goes up to the ceiling, this roughly method doubles the light level in a room.

If you want you can then add some tronics to a fl light to modulate it so it maintains the chosen light level as daylight dims, thus saving energy. You might find other ways that can save more energy than that. In a skyscraper the total lighting load is pretty large, so it becomes well worthwhile.

NT

[Rob Morley]

But it looks really stupid and only works on South facing windows.

[<me9]

Probably not at more northerly latitudes, The sun only reaches 12degrees here in winter, I doubt if the gain could be more than the odd percent. Payback time would be longer than the system life.

[Brian Sharrock]

There's another way: using 'light-pipes' aka 'sun-pipes'. These are a large-ish diameter 'flexible' pipe with a highly reflective (mirrored) interior. The pipe protrudes through the roof - capped with a transparent dome- and light bounces from side to side and eventually downwards to spill out, and illuminate rooms, corridors etc. etc. I've seen some light pipes with an integral electric light fitted so one gets illumination after sundown. Also, some systems are fitted with a fresnel lens at the top of the pipe to bend the sun's rays down into the pipe. AIUI, the system was developed in Australia - [could just be the first place I heard of them]- and curiously they seemed to work (best) on the North facing roof sides :)

[meow2222]

It sounds like you may have misunderstood the application. The idea is to reflect in skylight, not sunlight, thus it works equally well regardless of aspect.

If you were trying to capture heat, that would want south facing windows.

As for looks, large reflectors arent good, but small ones are fine, and can act as an exterior window sill. As energy efficiency presses forward its quite possible that reflective sills may become standard some day. Whether they'll be 4" deep or 6-8" who knows.

NT