Solar light pipe project attracting attention
from educators, professional organizations

Educators and professional organizations are taking note of Texas A&M's award-winning solar light pipe in the wake of its exhibition at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency contest in April.

The project consists of a collector that funnels sunlight through a pipe of highly reflective material into a simulated office space at the College of Architecture's Digital Fabrication Facility on Texas A&M's Riverside campus.

A summary of the project from Liliana Beltrán, associate professor of architecture and its principal investigator, is in The Society of Building Science Educators' Summer 2010 newsletter.

"Technology is currently available to produce a hybrid solar lighting system based on the efficient design of a horizontal light pipe and the intelligent use of materials," wrote Beltrán. SBSE is an association of university educators and practitioners in architecture and related disciplines that support excellence in the teaching of environmental science and building technologies. The newsletter is available at http://sbse.org/newsletter/issues/NewsSu2010.pdf.

Beltrán responded to an invitation from the Dallas chapter of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America to explain the project with an appearance May 19 and is scheduled to address Houston's IES group Feb. 9, 2010.

The IES communicates information on all aspects of lighting practice to its members, the lighting community and consumers through a variety of programs, publications, and services.

Uppsala University's Gunnar Nicklasson, a professor of solid state physics who specializes in solar energy materials, visited the pipe at the Ranch May 31.

Nicklasson, who came to Texas A&M from Uppsala, Sweden, to deliver a lecture about electromagnetic glazings, was accompanied by Laszlo Kish, professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M.

They were very impressed with the daylighting introduced by the pipe, said Beltrán, who is continuing to work on the project during the summer.

"I continue to collect data at our testing room," she said. "Two conference papers and a journal article will be published about our light pipe this year. We are preparing the drawings for the next phase, and I am also starting with the energy modeling of the new testing rooms," said Beltrán, who will lead the team through Phase II of the pipe's development with $75,000 from the EPA contest.

- Posted: July 9, 2010 -

Contact:   Phillip Rollfing, prollfing@archone.tamu.edu or 979.458.0442.