A new role for fiber optics: efficient lighting
CNET’s News.com has a piece about a company called Fiberstars, which makes lighting systems based on fiber-optic cabling. The company claims its system consumes two-thirds less energy than the best flourescent lighting systems on the market. Basically, an external high-intensity light bulb shines a light into the end of a cable and the lighting is carried along the length of the cabling toward its destination. Swimming pool makers like it because all the electronics is external to the water so all you have is a glowing fiber-optic cable in the pool. Click here for a pic.
Another piece profiles a company called Sunlight Direct, which does pretty much the same thing but uses natural sunlight (basically, a 40-inch mirrored dish that follows the movement of the sun all day) as the source light. This system provides internal lighting during the day only, so I imagine an existing lighting system is needed for night time. Click here for some cool pics.
I should also redirect attention to an article I wrote this spring about an Ottawa-based company called Group IV Semiconductor that is using fiber-optic technology used in telecom network routers as the basis of a new silicon-based light bulb design that the company claims will outperform LEDs and make compact flourescents obsolete.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
September 1st, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Re: Sunlight Direct’s light pipe technology: Pretty cool! Would require only lamp-grade optics, as opposed to image-grade mirrors etc. Surprised at the amount of leakage into the ceiling-space as shown in the initial photo. Maybe they used side-emitting fibre cable -as is likely used to line the swimming pool in the story above -so to give the photo a self-illustrative aspect, whereas in an actual installations those cables would be jacketed by a reflective inner surface protective sheathing.
September 1st, 2006 at 3:21 pm
The low-tech version is the SunPipe.
See here:
http://www.sunpipe.co.uk/sunpipe/domestic/rooftypes.php
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Another company that may be of interest, as they’ve announced they’re working on a true passive solar lighting system using their patented technologies is Light Beam. http://www.lightbeaminc.com
We’ve used their solid state illuminators and fiber, and it’s truly maginificent!