Self-sustaining House Lighting

They built a Dilbert House a while ago that approached self sustaining. If your really interested they do into some in depth specs. I hope that helps. I think he might have had more energy generation capability that you. What's your power budget?

Lighting

• Fluorescent lights for rooms that don't need to be dimmed
• New technology is instant-on and no flicker
• With proper ballasts, fluorescent lights are dimmable, but the cost of the ballasts erases the energy savings.
• OTT(tm) light for desk areas, to avoid sadness from lack of sunlight
• Motion detectors for lights in some rooms (bedrooms for example)
• New light sensors use both infrared and motion detection
• One switch panel for all lights in a room
• Solar light pipes
• No skylights (too much heat gain and maintenance)
• Lots of lighting choices on interior. High priority.
• Solar outdoor lights for landscape

These are excellent recommendations. Recently-developed technology is taking dimming ballast cost down to a 'no additional cost' level. Hardware should be available in six months. Also, new versions of compact fluorescent lamps are available for bathroom 'light bars' and there are 3-way compact fluorescents for conventional table lamps.

There are a lot of Light Emitting Diode solutions available now. The advantages are low power consumption, low voltage, use DC and if engineered correctly are extremely reliable. Use the Global Specs web site to search for LEDs, you will find heaps and if you play it right you may be able to get samples for nothing.

I'm impressed. The heating and hot water are the hard parts. Lighting is relatively easy, and following suggestions of the other posters (I especially like the use of LED's) should give you a system that can be powered by just solar energy stored in batteries.

I agree with the LED recommendation. I would also try to utilize interior light sources to thier full potential...possibly through fiber optic conductors (for localized needs) and reflectors to distribute light. Sky lights for daytime would be a must. (Thermal glass, naturally)

I can't remember where but sometime in the last week I read about a LED lighting module that had a red, green and blue LED that could each be controlled individually giving you not only intensity control but colour as well. I will try and find the reference and post it here.

Have you heard about the light tubes, that project in from the outside?

Skylights, solar lights usually used for the exterior. Do a search on architectural lighting etc.

All the best,

Ron Wagner

I eventually found this. It's a 24 Watt 480 Lumens LED unit that you can adjust the intensity of the Red Green and Blue components so it give you the ability to not only change the intensity but the colour as well.

http://www.electronicproducts.com/ShowPage.asp?SECTION=3700&PRIMID=&FileName=hlap05.dec2006.html

Best of luck.

I just received and E-Mail about a white LED that could pump out 140 Lumens and thought you might be interested. Follow the link for more details.

http://www.electronicproducts.com/ShowPage.asp?SECTION=3700&PRIMID=&FileName=hlap06.dec2006.html

I'm in the process of doing exactly what you have done, I"m curious to know what you did for your heating and hot water??