Benefits of Hybrid Solar Lighting



Posted: Friday, July 23, 2010

by Vicki Duong
Green Culture, Inc.

Hybrid solar lighting is the newest addition in the field of solar energy use, and has been causing quite some buzz and excitement because of its resourcefulness and very simple design. While its major focus is on commercial and industrial buildings, today environmentally conscious homeowners are starting to look at it as a very practicable source of lighting.

Instead of using solar panels to trap solar energy as electricity and then storing the electricity before using it to power lights in a building, a hybrid type of solar lighting transmits the trapped solar energy directly on the structure thanks to optical fibers. This of course bypasses the intermediary step hence a much higher efficiency.

Generally, traditional solar panels use circa 15% of the total amount of sunlight received and trapped successfully. However, the standard light bulbs will use most of the energy collected through heat, resulting in an efficiency of around 2% of the total 155 of original sunlight trapped. Contrastingly, hybrid solar lighting systems have the ability to use as much as 50% of the original amount of sunlight trapped.

The benefits of hybrid solar lighting don't end there either. Also, hybrid solar lighting systems produce much less heat compared to traditional bulbs thereby saving on cooling costs significantly. (Note that the optical fibers of hybrid solar lighting are cold enough on their own to be touched with no risk of burning). Further, they also generate indirect sunlight in that the light received is full-spectrum instead of the narrow band of sunlight found in most light bulbs today.

Hybrid solar lighting systems are purely hybrids in that they do make use of artificial light. basically, on a typical day 20% of the light made is created artificially, which is automatically improved thanks to special photo sensors that determine the level of lights required, as needed on those cloudy days.

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