Products / Sola Hybrid Lighting
Artificial lighting has come a long way since the development of the first incandescent lamp in the 1870's. Over the past century, improvements to lamp and luminaire designs have improved both the energy efficiency and quality of lighting now available to commercial buildings. However, despite these impressive developments, artificial lighting is still considered a poor substitute for the natural qualities of sunlight preferred by most. As we move into a period where individuals are spending an increasing amount of time working and conducting business indoors, the demand for more natural, higher quality lighting is rapidly growing. In response to this unmet demand, the Hybrid Solar Lighting (HSL) technology was developed with the following simple goal:
To capture sunlight and distribute it, using optical fibers, into the interior of a building to provide premium quality, controllable lighting capable of reducing energy consumption.
An idea that has been around for many years, this technology only recently matured to the level neces- sary to allow cost-effective implementation. Using plastic optical fibers and plastic optical components, Barrier Energy is beta-testing a solar lighting system (the HSL3000) that delivers high quality sunlight and provides a revolutionary alternative to conventional day lighting. Unlike skylights and windows, the HSL3000 allows the user to control where and how sunlight is used within a building and provides supple- mental electric lighting to automatically maintain a constant level of illumination.
The Solar Collector
The HSL3000's solar collector consists of a two-axis tracking mechanism that supports a 48" diameter plastic primary mirror, a smaller secondary mirror, and a fiber optic receiver unit. The collector tracks the sun using a microprocessor-based control- ler that accurately calculates the position of the sun given the local GPS coordinates and the local time. The collector can be mounted to a building rooftop through either an integrated structural mount or a portable mounting system. The power required by the collector can likewise be tied into the building power or generated separately using a solar photovoltaic panel. The collector requires minimal maintenance and is designed to handle adverse environmental conditions.
The Optical Fibres
Light gathered with the two-mirror collector system is focused into the end of a fiber optic receiver. The fibre optic receiver consists of special optics that allow only visible light to be concentrated into a 1.5" diameter bundle of plastic optical fibres. The bundle is actually a grouping of 127 smaller 1/8" diameter fibres. The amount of light emitted from just two of these fibres is equivalent to a typical 50W incandescent bulb and it is cool to the touch!
These fibres can be grouped and distributed as needed to provide lighting throughout a building's interior. How- ever, because plastic fibre absorbs some of the collected light, the length of the optical fibre generally does not exceed ten meters.
The Hybrid Luminaires
A "hybrid" luminaire is a lighting fixture that contains both electric illuminants (such as fluorescent lamps or incandescent bulbs) as well as fibre optic illuminants. Often the fibre optic illuminant is a dispersing element that converts the highly directional fibre optic light into a more desirable distribu- tion. Hybrid luminaires are available for both directional lighting and area lighting. A daylight harvest- ing sensor is used to maintain a constant amount of combined illu- mination resulting from the hybrid luminaire. When sky conditions result in a reduction in available sunlight, the hybrid luminaire can instantly respond by increasing the amount of corresponding elec- tric light.
