[Immmm]

I was recently watching the idiot box (tv) the other day as you do when you need to vegitate. Anyway I saw a brief section on hybrid lighting. Which is basically setting up a satelite looking device on the top of your house or building, which captures the sun light. This sun light captured is then fed through optic fibers to light sockets which in turn...lights a room. Now of course as soon as the sun light disappears the electricity kicks back in.

Now as this is an extremely cheap use of lighting during the day wouldn't this be ideal for most office buildings....? Now I am just wondering what are the barriers which are preventing this environmentally friendly technology into new property developments. Maybe installation, but over a period of time this hybrid lighting would pay itself off with a drop in lighting bills.

Anyone have some thoughts...?

[blueeyebrit]

A very clever concept! I can imagine it would suffer from lack of government backing. As an example, look at water tanks in the state of Victoria since the government offered the rebate.

The other thing may be the cost of fiber optics. I'm not entirely sure what it costs myself, but it would be something to look in to.

[insomnia]

Seems like the same thing as solar powered energy. Simple, clean, but for some reason people aren't adopting it very much. Just not convienent?

[Karen]

Interesting.

I would suspect that most people would look at this as inconvienent, and highly expensive.

It does seem like a great way to tap into solar power.

Karen

[mxer210]

Yeah, solar power still needs alot of work before it goes anywhere. Only a few places have it at the moment because it's expensive and doesn' tproduce very much power. I think in a few years it'll be alot more popular once it becomes more effective. Hopefully we wont have any more rolling blackouts in California because we're out of power.

[phileas]

Hi,

did they mention how much the whole thing cost, including installation etc?

thanks