What is Hybrid Solar Lighting?
Hybrid solar lighting is a new innovation in the field of solar energy use, which has caused quite a bit of excitement and buzz because of its simple design and ingenuity. While its primary focus is on industrial and commercial buildings, many environmentally-conscious homeowners are beginning to look at it as a viable source of lighting. Rather than using solar panels, which collect solar energy as electricity, store that electricity, and use it to power lights throughout a building, hybrid solar lighting instead transmits the solar energy directly into the structure using optical fibers. By bypassing this intermediary step, hybrid solar lighting has a much higher efficiency. Traditional solar panels are able to utilize approximately 15% of the sunlight they receive, and standard light bulbs lose the bulk of their energy in the form of heat — the end result is a total efficiency of about 2% of the original sunlight. By contrast, hybrid solar lighting systems are able to utilize as muc
