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Research article2015Peer reviewedOpen access

Lighting Energy Saving with Light Pipe in Farm Animal Production

von Wachenfelt, Hans; Vakouli, Vaja; Pacheco Diéguez’, Alejandro; Gentile, Niko; Dubois, Marie-Claude; Jeppsson, Knut-Håkan

Abstract

The Swedish animal production sector has potential for saving electric lighting of €4-9 million per year using efficient daylight utilisation. To demonstrate this, two light pipe systems, Velux® (house 1) and Solatube® (house 2), are installed in two identical pig houses to determine if the required light intensity, daylight autonomy (DA), and reduced electricity use for illumination can be achieved. In each house, three light sensors continuously measure the indoor daylight relative to an outdoor sensor. If the horizontal illuminance at pig height decreases below 40 lux between 08.00 and 16.00 hours, an automatic control system activates the lights, and electricity use is measured. The daylight factor (DF) and DA are determined for each house, based on annual climate data. The mean annual DA of 48% and 55% is achieved for house 1 and house 2, respectively. Light pipes in house 2 have delivered significantly more DA than those in house 1. The most common illuminance range between 0 and 160 lux is recorded in both houses, corresponding to approximately 82% and 83% of daylight time for house 1 and house 2, respectively. Further, the daylighting system for house 2 has produced a uniform DF distribution between 0.05 and 0.59. The results demonstrate that considerable electric energy savings can be achieved in the animal production sector using light pipes. Saving 50% of electric lighting would correspond to 36 GWh or 2520 t CO2 per year for Sweden, but currently the energy savings are not making the investment profitable.

Keywords

Light pipe; Daylighting; Energy saving; Electric lighting

Published in

Journal of Daylighting
2015, Volume: 2, number: 2, pages: 21-31
Publisher: SolarLits