IDEA: Passive in-door illumination

Hi,
  with the fibre optical material coming down in price the concept of directing light from outside to the inside is more affordable. Some interesting concepts and ideas are on the horizon:

  Similar to water, sewage and electricity one can consider a lighting infrastructure directing outside natural light to various places within the building and/or appliances. A well placed collection point for light with a wide angle lense or for more luxurious systems a sun tracking mirror will feed the light into the system. Night time and low light compensation could be achieved by a high efficiency light source supplementing the systems feed.

  Using a simple plug-in system, light could be fed into appliances such as refriderators or freezers perhaps even with IR light filtering for background illumination. This, of course, can be appreciated best with see-through doors know from the retail fridges.  Closets and cabinets with bad lighting could well be supplemented with daytime lighting as needed.

  Interesting, given sufficient light, are connecting fibres up to flat-screen TV, flat-screen computer screens and other electronic devices that normally are supplemented with a build in light source. Particular for laptops such a built in lightsource is rather battery draining.

  However, for the short term benefits a natural light is quite night for background illumination in living or working areas as there are general ergonomical benefits of natural light.