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If used correctly solar day lighting can provide free, high quality lighting, and do it with less heat generation inside the house than conventional electric lighting.
Don't underestimate the value of
solar lighting and efficient lighting -- using daylight coupled with efficient
electric lights could save a typical home over $100 a year in electricity
and more than one of CO2 emissions.
And, good solar lighting is a joy to work in.
On the page:
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| Solar Lighting | |
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Designing with Lighting Chris Herman |
Home
Power Article, Issue 109Good article on using natural daylighting in homes. Good guidance on how to get natural lighting while avoiding overheating. |
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IBACOS Light Guide http://www.ibacos.com/hpl5.html
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A
fairly useful guide for designing and choosing high performance lighting.The "Room-by-room" and "Specifications of Fixtures" sections have some pretty helpful information on what available and how to design good lighting. |
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SunCatcher -- Solar Lighting and Ventilation
And a small version: |
An
interesting new product that provides both solar daylighting and
ventilation. |
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Sunshine From a Tube Dan Chiras Mother Earth News
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Mother
Earth News Article, Issue 202Good overview of using tubular skylights to bring sunlight into a room. |
| SunPipe http://www.sunpipe.co.uk/sunpipe/ SolaTube
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Two
of many commercial products that "pipe" sun light down through a reflective
tube to provide interior lighting. |
| Light Shelves www.energybooks.com/pdf/10001005.pdf
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The
article explains how light shelves work and provides some design
information. |
| Sun, Wind & Light, 2nd Edition G.Z. Brown and Mark DeKay
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An
architectural design strategies book with a number of practical day lighting
techniques that use direct or reflected sunlight (it also provides many
other solar heating and cooling design strategies). Quantitative
design and sizing methods are provided for each day lighting technique.Pretty easy reading for an architecture book. |
| Garage/Workshop Sunspace
Gary |
This
is my very simple and inexpensive way to both light and heat your dark cave
of a garage or workshop. I have used this scheme for more than a year
now, and would never be without it again. |
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Himawari Daylight Collector
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Device
to collect sunlight with a set of Fresnel lens, and direct the collected
light to any part of a building.Photos for many example uses provided. |
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Heliostats for Lighting Indoor and Outdoor Spaces http://archrecord.construction.com
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Some
not very detailed but interesting descriptions of heliostat based lighting
systems. |
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Sunlight Direct http://www.sunlight-direct.com/technical.html
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Producer
of solar lights that use fiber optics for transmission of light. The
system uses a tracking solar dish to collect light and fiber optics to
distribute light in the building. Does not look inexpensive. |
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Build A Simple Solar Powered Outdoor Light, Jeffery Yago, Backwoods Magazine
www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/yago92.html
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Backwoods
Magazine Article on building a solar PV powered "street light". |
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Heliostat Lighting Commercial Products: Some ideas for home built heliostats from Duane at RedRok.com: |
A
heliostat is a mirror that reflects light onto a fixed target by tracking
the sun. The target can be a window on the north, east, or west side
of the house. The result is great solar daylighting for normally dark
rooms. If the mirror was large enough, some useful heat could be
provided as well. |
| The ultimate in Heliostat Lighting Mirror gives Italian Village Its Place in the Sun |
"ROME
(Reuters) - A village in the Italian Alps is finally basking in winter
sunlight thanks to a giant mirror installed on a mountain top to reflect the
sun's rays into the main square."They use a heliostat to reflect sun into the town square. I've thought about doing this (on a much smaller scale) to reflect light into my east facing living room windows. |
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Elights Link List http://www.elights.com/elights/lightinglinks.html
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Very extensive set of lighting links. |
| Efficient Lighting | |
| Efficient Lighting
EERE on Types of Lighting This is our families estimated saving in energy and GHG's for going to
CFL's: |
It
is a just plain no-brainer to use fluorescents and compact fluorescents.
They are far more efficient, last much much longer, and will save you a ton
of money and greenhouse gas emissions. Most utility companies offer some form of rebate program for buying CFL's -- making it even more of a no-brainer! |
| LED Holiday Lights Almost all of the usual places that sell holiday lights now sell the LED lights. Prices still vary a lot. We got ours a Costco for about $10 per string.
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LED
holiday lights are safer (no heat), last a very long time, and look
great. They also use much less energy and significantly reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. The energy saving can be 90% or more.A typical 100 light LED string uses less than 4 watts! They have an expected lifetime of 20+ years. With the LED holiday light prices dropping, the payback period can be as small as a season or two (considering both lower operating cost and longer life). |