Performance of New Hybrid Solar Lighting Luminaire Design

Abstract

We report on the performance of a new hybrid luminaire designed to blend light from a fiber optic solar source with electric fluorescent lamps. The luminaire design studied involves a commercially-available fluorescent luminaire that had been modified to include optical elements for efficiently dispersing a fiber optic solar light source. Quantitative measurements of the hybrid luminaire’s optical efficiency and spatial intensity distribution/deviations are discussed. The effects of static differences and dynamic fluctuations in spatial intensity distribution are qualitatively discussed and potential design improvements examined.

ADAPTIVE FULL-SPECTRUM SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEMS CROSS-CUTTING R&D ON ADAPTIVE FULL SPECTRUM SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEMS FOR MORE EFFICIENT AND AFFORDABLE USE OF SOLAR ENERGY IN BUILDINGS AND HYBRID PHOTOBIOREACTORS

“…The fused quartz glass method offers an economical and effective solution to overheating at the fiber entrance. Losses due to the coupling of the quartz and optical fiber are estimated at 3 % (Maxey et al, 2003) and visible transmission losses through the quartz are estimated at 2 %.…”

“…Preliminary experimental data from ORNL reported a 58.4 % efficiency of the side emitting rod luminaires . It is estimated that nearly 20 % of the losses are due to optical fiber coupling losses which have since been addressed by Maxey (Maxey et al, 2003).…”

Flex Fatigue of Side Emitting Optical Fiber

“…Plastic optical fiber (POF) has been attracted attention because it is light, soft, flexural, impact, inexpensive, easy processing, and large numerical aperture. Widely applications of POF from communication [1,2,3] to decoration [4,5,6] under various environments have been developed and commercialized. The environmental factors (mechanical, climatic, chemical, biological and radiometric) certainly have a significant effect on the physical and chemical properties of POF, which obviously affects optical transmission performance of POF leading to the changes of lifetime of POF system [7].…”

Configuration of Daylighting System via Fibers and Experiments of Concentrated Sunlight Transmission

“…According to the structure forms, there are two ways of focalization including optical fiber bundle and single fiber. For the former, concentrator with large diameter is used to produce large focal spot, and so it can use optical fiber bundle to receive the concentrated radiation [7][8][9]. For the latter, the concentrator is lens with small diameter which produces small focal spot only suiting for single fiber.…”