Applications of Direct Transmission of Solar Energy from a Remote Source

In sunny environments such as the Aswan region, tell us now, the door is open to new ways to benefit from sun energy. Beside conventional methods, such as converting solar energy to electrical one (photovoltaic or thermal units) -or- converting it to thermal energy (as in solar water heater), there are new methods to use the solar energy.

One of these methods is the direct sun light transmission into buildings to use it as a lighting source during daytime hours. There are many techniques that can be used to transport daylight into inaccessible rooms.

Solar lighting via light pipes or fiber optic bundles with solar concentrator is one of these techniques. In light pipe systems, sun light can be transmitted through a pipe made of a material having an internal surface of high reflectance to reflect the sun light efficiently.

Although the optical fiber systems have been developed to overcome their problems of light uniformity and overheating to be more efficient, these systems have become more complicated which will lead to increasing the cost and the maintenance needs.

This will lead to more researches on the development of the daylighting pipes to improve the transmission efficiency in particular for the light pipes