Sunportal Uses Pipes to Deliver Daylighting Anywhere Within a Building

<a href="http://www.thesunportal.com/index.php" target="_blank">Sunportal</a>, a London-based venture established by British and South Korean scientists, has begun offering a <a href="http://inhabitat.com/daylighting/" target="_blank">daylighting system</a> that collects natural light with a parabolic dish concentrator and delivers it through pipes to any room in a building. Sunportal claims that its technology provides “the highest transmission rates” over any distance and in any direction. Many daylighting systems, the company says, “are too restricted to deliver natural sunlight over long distances in deep plan spaces.” Others are simply too expensive to effectively bring daylight into “the core of deep buildings.” Read on to learn how the Sunportal system addresses these issues!

The <a href="http://www.thesunportal.com/index.php" target="_blank">Sunportal</a> system tracks the sun and collects light throughout the day with an "Active Sunlight Collector" - and it's able to do so even on cloudy days.

The collector redirects the light into an "Ultra Sunlight Concentrator", which channels it into the aperture of a small light pipe.

The concentrated sunlight can then be directed anywhere over any distance through a series of "Sunlight Relay Lenses".

Sunportal says that because its technology uses “the latest IR-cut coating technology, there is no heat loss or gain associated with the transmitted daylight,” which reduces heating and air conditioning costs.

Sunportal currently has dealers in Europe and North America. <a href="http://www.thesunportal.com/gallery_01.php" target="_blank">Systems have already been installed in South Korea</a> at a pumped-storage plant, a steel mill, and a pedestrian subway.

Active Sunlight Collector unit

Active Sunlight Collector

Ultra Sunlight Concentrator

How Sunportal delivers daylighting inside a building