Opportunities for efficient fiber optics

摘要

High efficiency distributed lighting systems for general lighting applications, delivering light comparable to but with an energy saving of 80% or more over traditional sources have recently become available. This remarkable achievement is due to: the development of long lived high efficiency light sources that match the color rendition and warmth of traditional incandescent and fluorescent sources; the creation of a new generation of non-imaging collectors to efficiently collect and direct the light; and the availability of low loss and low cost light pipes to distribute the light. Given these improvements many incandescent, halogen and even fluorescent applications are now best served using fiber optic lighting technology. In achieving practical systems, a number of significant technical problems have been overcome. In this paper we shall review some of these solutions as well as indicate our view of the direction and impact of future advances.