A lot of energy is wasted by lighting up offices and homes, during day-time, when there is so much light outside! If you have seen a traditional house, you'll know that most of them have an opening on the roof (if there is no floor above it) from which sun-light would pass-through to illuminate the room/hall. Now since we have electricity, we have totally forgotten that concept and waste energy by lighting up homes/offices during daytime. Especially those portions that don't get enough light from the windows.
Can something bring the bright day-light into buildings, even though they may not have a roof directly facing the sun? Yes.
Recently, I went to an architecture exhibition, where I came across the Solatube product promoted by RSG Projects, in India. The executive explained to me that these tubes have highly reflective surfaces inside and they can be arranged in a way that sunlight can be brought into offices/homes even if they are located in the middle of a multi-story building, surrounded by other offices at all sides. These tubes can be brought into the building from several feet away, from any direction.
The above embedded video shows a simple Solatube installation at home where sunlight can be brought-in directly from the roof. I have embedded this video so that the readers can see how bright natural sun-light (brought in via a tube) can be, and how easy it is to illuminate the insides of any building using the natural light.
So, why aren't homes and offices not designed to maximize sunlight usage during day-time? Just imagine how much energy can be saved!
