Solar power – Interior daylighting – Can we catch the light?

There is a lot of talking about solar panels and solar powered electricity production lately. Though this is not the only way to collect energy and use it as lighting. We can also use so called daylighting for interior spaces.

What is the daylighting?

Daylighting is the use of natural sunlight to brighten up house interior. You can achieve daylighting by placing windows on the roof  in proper sizes and locations or by special designed solar daylighting devices. And solar daylightind devices are the subject of which I would like to say a few words.

Daylighting devices are in shape of tubes or cables:

Tubular daylighting device

is special device, which is placed on the roof and from there it brings light into interior place of the house. It’s composed out of three basic parts:

Solar collector – head of the device is clear multi-faceted dome, which can catch sunlight from almost all angles.

Solar tube also called solar tunnel – is the body of device. When sunlight is collected it’s channeled through highly-reflective tube to the room to be lit. Tubes usualy have10 inches (25,4 cm) in diameter. The UV rays that could fade subjects in the room (carpets, clothes,..) are removed by device.

Diffuser – creates steady, even light through the lit space, without creating any glare. It is set on the end of the tube on the ceiling.

This is it, device you just mantle and forget about it. It gives you satisfaction without any current expences.

Fiber-optic daylighting device

collects and channels the light through cables. This device is also composed of three parts:

Solar collector – it can be placed on top of the roof or any south-facing sides of the building. Collector is a rectangular panel composed of small lenses, which catch light from many angles.

Fiber-optic cables – cables which can channel sunlight up to two stories deep! It means also underground basement can be lit. UV rays are removed by special filtres placed near the surface of the lenses.

Fixture – creates steady, even light, without glaring. It is fixed on the ceiling at the end of the optic cable.

Interesting, powerful, healthy solution for perfect interior lit.

Landscape, garden, yard solar lights – all you need to know about

Many times when you return home from work you have only one thing on your mind, to sit somewhere quiet to some nice atmosphere and relax with your family. Other times organising small picnics or celebrations you want to conjure special ambient to make your quests feeling really welcome and delighted. Or you have a fountain, swimming pool or just a path that doesn’t live. It’s just there, imperceptible and tedious. You want to give it some life and purpose, not knowing what to do and not wanting to do it when you start thinking how many things you have to do to make it work and to maintain it.

Creating nice ambient can be simple and enjoyable if you have the idea and some information how to do it.

Outdoor solar lights have many advantages and are produced in many variations that give different purpose to its use. It makes a big change in your garden, yard, path, fountain, pool when you use proper kind of illumination. With solar illumination you will realize many benefits in comparison to traditionally used lightning system with cables, digging, maintenance and electrical bills. You don’t need all that now. Technology of solar lightning grew to the point, where you don’t need to think about high amounts of money and where to get the type of light that will fit into your idea of decorating your garden.

What kind of illumination can we create with outdoor solar lights?

- illuminate walkways, paths, staircases

- decorate flower beds, gardens, swimming pools

- embellish fountains

- mildly illuminate decks, patios

- decorate fence with soft light

- turn away undesired guests…

For all the purposes there are special designed lights with slight deviations in operation. Most common are solar LED lights which use photovoltaic cells to convert streaming daylight into stored electricity for powering energy-efficient light fixtures. The daylight energy is stored in high capacity batteries and released at night or during a power outage. At the moment most used and environmental friendly lights are LED (light-emitting diodes) lights which reduce consumption of energy, illuminate good and last long. Every day some improvements appear considering saving energy, finding new-lower costs materials, higher efficiency of accumulating of solar energy since people realized that this is really a long term investment. Major benefit is environmental feature, though we are still not totally aware, what is the big thing we do with small individual impact. For many major, but in fact second biggest benefit is no more electrical bills. There’s no need to dig holes and ditches, no electric cuts occur and there’s little maintenance needed – do it yourself principle. Modern designs can really make the difference at your home.

Let’s review the purpose and types of outdoor solar lights:

Solar lights that provide gentle, safe lightning:  garden lights, path and walkway lights, floating pool lights, pond lights, ornamental lights, lanterns, decorative solar lights,..

Solar lights that provide strong, direct lightning: security lights, flesh lights, back-up lights, marine lights, recreational lights, flag lights,..

Solar lights provide strong, pointed lightning and require high-voltage strength:  spotlights, flag lights, sign lights,..

All these lights are easy to mount, no cables, no digging, almost no maintenance.

Enjoy your light!

UFO shaped solar purifying plant

Japanese manufacturer developed solar floating purifying plant to clean Osaka’s Dingy canals and castle moats. UFO shaped? It looks like people’s common idea of UFO, though it floats, it doesn’t fly.

Anyway it has good capacities that can purify up to 2.400 gallons of water a day. The system sucks water on the bottom, cleans it and returns it on top through the jet. Water spray cools the solar panels and increases efficiency. The jet makes purifier looks like a fountain, which gives the device besides practical function also an interesting solution for the surrounding.

Live green – Outdoor solar lights – street lights

Great alternative to traditional electric street lights are solar street light systems. These systems save maintenance and energy costs. Firstly, developed for remote areas with difficulties supplying electrical energy and areas with frequent electrical cuts and later for commonly used illumination of streets, parks, parking lots and other public areas.  Street lights are great consumers of energy and a lot of maintenance is needed for all the cities around the world, which costs a lot of money! Benefits of installing solar street lights are besides reduction of running costs and maintenance are also plain set up almost anywhere, very positive impact on the environment, no digging, wiring and other road works, no influence on lightning in case of power outages.

Before choosing solar product it’s very important that you know what kind of solar system is appropriate for your environment. Information you need to collect for the purpose of choosing optimal product are solar radiation, climatology at a given latitude, sunshine duration and hours of required illumination.

Only on that basis you should start selecting suitable solar lights. An important matter with reference to solar street lights is also the lamp. New LED technology ”lamps” have very long life, consume much less power than the metal halide or low pressure sodium lamps, LED’s cause smaller light pollution, the luminosity is adequate and solar LED’s allows smaller size of panels, batteries, chargers,..

Considering all above your street, park or parking lot can revive in better and environmental healthy light without endless concern of electrical bills and malfunctions.

Solar traffic lights and road signs – efficient, safe and easy to use

In the past few years solar powered traffic lights are used a lot in third world countries since there are many troubles acquiring electricity specially in remote areas. In countries with sufficient electric supply and developed network, solar traffic lights and sign systems are used owing to another reason. Solar traffic lights and signs are environmental friendly, affordable and easy to assemble. The handiness of solar traffic lights and signs manifests the most in temporary settings, placed for a set period of time. It can be mounted easy and quickly by one person, supported on a post or trailer mounted. Lighting is produced by extra bright LEDs, that are high energy efficient and long lasting, so little maintenance is needed. Energy supply is assured with solar panels mounted on top of signs or traffic lights, which convert sunlight into electricity. Its activity is controlled by timer and can be activated directly, producing time sequence intervals or radar controlled. In case of solar traffic lights or sign sets, wireless control is reestablished between separate signs to synchronise its function. In case of electric cut this traffic lights and signs are still in function and therefore safer for drivers and all participants in road traffic. Besides technology is safe and easy to use what gives the weight when determining what kind of technology should be used for these purpose.