Fiber Optics in a home environment makes for fascinating conversation. If you would like to see a brief history of fiber optics, visit this website.  When fiber-optics are mentioned, everyone thinks of their use in phone and Internet communications. But what about their use in the home in lighting and in kitchen applications?

 

According to reports an estimated 35% of electricity used is expended on the lighting of home interiors during the daytime. Retail businesses have an even larger percentage with 45%. Instead of focusing on trying to generate more electricity to meet the high business-hour demand, we should try to reduce the need for electricity with fiber-optic lighting. I have sun-tubes in my present home and I had them in my previous home also. In closets and bathrooms, it is great to have a natural light source in hard to light areas. Other than having light and being off the electrical grid, there are other advantages to the natural lighting such as improved moods, and in business, more productive environments and employees.

 

Setting up a natural, non-electric lighting system in even ten percent of homes and businesses would be like having blackout-prevention insurance. Another hidden saving would result. Since traditional artificial-light tubes and bulbs emit heat as well as visible light, the use of fiber-optic direct lighting will actually lessen the amount of energy that has to be expended on air conditioning, diminishing the strain on the grid.

 

In a Discovery Channel report, Melissa Lapsa, Program Manager of Solar Energy Technologies at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, waxes enthusiastic about the possibility of water heating using IR from sunlight. No wonder. The first experience with the impressive potential of sunlight for heating water involved idly dipping a single optical fiber – which was “emitting only concentrated visible sunlight” – into a mug full of coffee. The report sites that, “The coffee was boiling within minutes!” With captured and selected IR light, the effect would be expected to be even more dramatic.

 

A lot of daytime food preparation could be done in the home without fuel. This would be particularly of value in the sunbelt  regions, but not wholly dismissed in the northern states.