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Singular home light source. | |||||||||||||||||
I've been toying with the idea of a singular light source in a home for years. This could conceivably reduce over all energy consumption in a home dramatically where 1 (albeit strong) light source could feed multiple rooms via fiber optics through out a house. A type of light switch could be used to interrupt or vary light output as needed, and when all lights are turned off it would power down the primary light source. I built a prototype that uses a modified automotive HID bulb using only 12v and the results are encouraging, I plan to install such a system in my motor home. The only withdraw would be if the bulb failed then several (depending upon the setup) if not all rooms in the home would go dark unless a back up bulb kicked on. What do you think?
Lucid, Nov 08 2009
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Why would one very bright light be more efficient than several weaker lights? I usually only need light in one room at a time. A system with small lights optimized for each room would seem to me to be more efficient than a single bright light that may be needlessly bright for any single room. The most efficient system would use sunlight during the day and LED lighting at night.
I had much the same idea and if practical I plan to test it in a house I will be building next year although my idea extended it a bit. My thought was to site the singular source in the roof space along with a sky window so that during the day sunlight was available throughout the house and the singular source would only start to illuminate as the level of sunlight diminished. For a singular source I actually plan to use 4 sources so that if one bulb does go at least there is still light available. My thought here was to use 4 LED panels rather than incandescent lighting. Take a look at pro event lighting for the type of panels and also at sunpipes which do some of this already.
Dwane your argument would be valid in a single person home. The HID uses only 30-45 watts and produces 60 lumens per watt per watt covering 4-5 rooms and 5-6 light sources per room. I have 15 fiber optic bundle outputs outputs throwing as much light as a hand held flashlight. Where as common white LED produce about 15-19 lumen per watt (only recently good ones still only achieve about 45 lumen per watt) times how many are needed per room then times the rooms being used. The energy savings with the HID is there. And SLC, yes I forgot to add that during the day a sun light collector could take over during daytime hours.
you'll lose a huge amount of efficiency in the fiber and in re-diffusing the light when it has reached a room. Even though a you claim good efficiency re watts/lumen, you still have to pay for the fibers and getting them from room to room. I'm with Dwayne-- I just can't see how this could ever be better.
I once worked on a aircraft panel where we were expected to use one fiber-distributed light source for all of the panel lights--for the instruments and avionics too. I was really stupid, a disaster really. Fell apart after the first prototype. And this system had the advantages of close proximity and light color being a perfect match for each fiber--something difficult with lamps.