Turn on Sunlight Inside

Reported November 2006

OAK RIDGE, There's nothing like a little sunshine to lift our spirits, but most of us spend our days indoors, working under the glow of those fluorescent lights that contribute to sky-high electric bills.

Now, optical and electrical engineers have figured out a way to pump natural light through electrical fixtures indoors -- a hybrid solar lighting project that they say could cut your lighting costs by almost half.

GPS technology tells a solar tracker where to face to collect the maximum amount of sunlight. Then, the light goes inside through optical fibers.

"Light enters one end, and it bounces along inside this fiber, kind of like a pipe carries water, and so it comes out the other end," Jeff Muhs, a research engineer for Sunlight Direct at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, tells Ivanhoe.

The sunlight comes out to regular light fixtures. The outer two tubes are regular electric light, and the middle white tube is sunlight. A sensor makes the electric lights dim when there's a lot of sun or get brighter when clouds roll in. The sunlight tubes get brighter with the sun.

"We have electric lights inside because that's the easiest way we have found to do it," John Morris, president and CEO of Sunlight Direct, tells Ivanhoe. "We now have a way to bring a natural, free resource in that we don't have to generate electricity for."

Ultraviolet light is filtered out of the system, so no dangerous rays hit anyone inside the building. One solar collector powers about eight hybrid light fixtures -- which can light about 1,000 square feet. The installation fee is $20,000 right now, but researchers hope to get it down to $8,000.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Duncan Earl
Optical/Electrical Engineer
Oak Ridge National Laboratories
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
(865) 675-7827
earldd@ornl.gov

Melissa Lapsa
Sunlight Direct
(865) 483-6624

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