Concentrated and piped sunlight for indoor illumination

Abstract

A concept for indoor illumination of buildings using sunlight is described. For this system, a tracking concentrator on the building roof follows the sun and focuses sunlight into a lightguide. A system of transparent lightguides distributes the sunlight to interior rooms. Recent advances in the transparency of acrylic plastic optical fibers suggest that acrylic lightguides could be successfully used for piping sunlight. The proposed system displaces electricity currently used for indoor lighting. It is argued that using sunlight directly for indoor illumination would be about twenty-five times more cost-effective than using sunlight to generate electricity with solar cells for powering electric lamps for indoor lighting.