Energy Efficient Lighting

Skylights. Didn't the Japanese do something with conduction concentrated sunlight through fiber optics or light shafts to light indoor spaces with the sun?

rcapper wrote: "Didn't the Japanese do something with conduction concentrated sunlight through fiber optics or light shafts to light indoor spaces with the sun?"

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Not sure if it was the Japanese, but here's a photo of it:

-e

europium, Have you got any more information on that picture? That may interest this company.. Thanks guys

It's a light pipe. I've read about them on a magazine several years ago. Here's one manufacturer (http://www.lightpipe.org.uk/). You'll find more if you type "light pipe" in a search engine.

More than a new investment on lighting you can adopt cost effective policies like

Use lights when there is movement with photo sensor

Timer controlling by switch on and switchoff

If light is speciffically use for heat for the broillers use more heat lights.

Use CFLs rather than incandescents

"Presently, we are using High Pressure Sodium for the Breeders, and Compact Fluorescent lamps for the Broilers, Pullets, and cage layers, and we are attempting to use the LED bulbs"

Could you use a natural light system or is this for night lighting? If its for day use then there are some really advanced skylight directional systems that can spit the light collected into multiple lights. If its nighttime lighting perhaps you could use the system to uses less lights. I really don't know much about the subject and wish you the best of luck.

Also, you'll get more results if you post again after the new year and more people are trying to avoid work, like me.

Hi Don,

A couple of months ago I was watching a program called Catalyst on Australian television that discussed the problems of intensity loss during total internal reflection in light pipes or conduits. Here is a transcript of the report;

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1610451.htm

Basically what they found is that if you split the light into primary colours, then dope the transmission medium with the appropriate coloured dye you can reduce the losses during each reflection and hence improve the overall transmission efficiency. The also found that the blue end of the spectrum was a problem for several reasons. They ended up with a system that used two appropriately coloured plastic light conduits that carried the red end of the spectrum with an integrated solar array and light emitting diodes for the blue end. They claim to achieve a considerable increase in both efficiency and achievable distance.

I don't know how far down the development track the product is but it may be worth getting in contact with the researchers at either the University of Technology in Sydney or the Queensland University of technology. The article only has the researchers names but if you follow the links to the staff directories for the universities you can get their email addresses from there.

Thanks a LOT, now we are getting somewhere, and hopefully this will give the company some viable alternatives..

Don

You can change the Fluorescent tubes to the energy efficient types which give savings of 25-30%.Add equipments available in various forms which help you save energy .The savings are about 30% on lighting load.For other areas we need more details of the type of load.

You can change the Fluorescent tubes to the energy efficient types which give savings of 25-30%.Add equipments available in various forms which help you save energy .The savings are about 30% on lighting load.For other areas we need more details of the type of load.

We can offer HPS systems, and understand that there are electronic dimming HPS ballast available, but have not tested them.

Also, someone said CCFL might be a good alternative?

What about Solar? has anyone put any figures together on the economics of this technology?

We have even considered the Electrodeless/Induction lighting system, but wondered what the economics of that system is??

Thanks for all the great suggestions

Donald Campbell

Has any study been done to correlate how much light they actually "need" or for a correlation between lighting levels and productivity? Or, to determine what wavelenghts are optimal for, or perceived best by the chickens?

Have all interior surfaces, especially the floor and ceiling (or underside of the roof and supports) been painted /covered in the lightest color (preferably white) possible? I know that it makes a huge difference in enhancing the lighting level, and yet is very often overlooked especially exposed roof girders and beams.

You're already using pretty efficient lighting.

Be aware that lighting is not the only energy cost that poultry
production faces.- They also have to maintain temperature.

Since your waste heat from the lighting system contributes to the heating,
you may find that going farther with energy reduction in the lighting may not be
as cost effective aas it at first appears.

At least, ask the question.

Thinking along those lines about added heat from lighting and the heat component of the industry. I had a thought about solar heat sinks. The principle is simple enough that it could be done with low costs. A funny thought though, most of the ideas given have a cost, the company is trying to cut costs. Why is it that cutting costs cost more? Ah, the way we live.

When the chicks are first placed in the house, they do need brooder heaters to maintain their body heat, but there comes a point when the birds own body heat are plenty to keep them all warm, obviously this depends on the time year.

I know in the summer here in the south, they need to run the fans constantly, with the evaporative cooling cells dripping. This is not only to remove the heat, but also to remove ammonia created by the birds waste or else they suffocate.

Campbell Lighting wrote: "...but also to remove ammonia created by the birds waste or else they suffocate."

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My folks live downwind from a poultry farm in western Colorado (not "chicken ranch" which, here in Texas, means something quite different). Even though the farm is several miles from their home, the odor that wafts on the breeze is nauseating. Sometimes the odor is so intense that it smells like a dead animal decomposing right under their open windows.

One of the reasons my parents built at that location was that the mountain air was so fresh and crisp and smelled like pine - especially after a nice rain. Now the area smells horrible. I don't know how you folks who work and live around these farms can stand it.

-e

Maybe the chicken farms are really the CAUSE of Global Warming? The massive amounts of ..... well maybe not, but its a fun thought.

europium You are RIGHT, it does smell putrid, especially after they have cleaned out the poultry house and stirred up all that shit... oh well, I guess that's the price we all have to pay to have cheap protein..

The untreated discharge of ammonia into the atmosphere by chicken farms is yet another example of environmental vandalism. Why do people think that it is their right to just dump toxins into the environment because it would cost them money to treat it.

Europium you may be interested to know that the maximum allowable exposure to ammonia on a working week basis is 25 ppm. If you are continuously exposed the safe level is considerably smaller and I don't know what it is but from what I know about other substances a continuous exposure to as little as a tenth of the working week limit may cause symptoms. I would certainly be concerned with a continuous exposure of 5 ppm and it can cause symptoms as low as 1 ppm which is also when you start to smell it. Here is a site that has some details about the effects of ammonia

http://www.dhfs.state.wi.us/eh/Air/fs/Ammonia.htm

The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety's NIOHS published limit is 25 ppm so if your parents are ever exposed to levels this high they may have some legal recourse against the chicken farm. From what you say the levels may indeed get this high. I have an Acrobat version of the NIOHS Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards that has lots of useful info about safe levels of many chemicals so if you would like a copy drop me a request and I will email a copy to you.

Hey masu, could I get that pocket guide? I would think that such a peice of info could be handy.

Thanks

Yes, Masu, please email it to me.

A side-effect of this problem is the growing population of flies that are attracted by the smell. It's not just ammonia that is discharged. That odor is easy to identify. It's the smell of decomposing animal flesh that predominates. The flies, of course, carry bacteria and disease. The whole thing is a health concern, but as both my parents and the poultry farm are outside city limits, the county itself is unconcerned. Perhaps a class-action suit might put a fire under their complacent asses.

-e

I went back and found the site I got the guide from so the easiest way is to get it from the here

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/pdfs/2005-149.pdf

Be warned however it's about 17MB long and it takes a wile to load so don't try and play with it till it fully loads. If you can't get it from this site drop me an e-mail and I will mail a copy to you.

Masu:

Thanks for the useful link!

Greg

I just remembered something else. If there is a gliding club near your parents property pay them a visit and see if you can get them to fly gliders over the chicken farm.

The gliding club where I fly got a complaint one day about gliders flying over a chicken farm. Evidently chickens are really dumb and if the shadow passes over the transparent roof they think it is a huge hawk or eagle and panic. It appears that's what happened and several hundred died of heart failure.

Chickens are really dumb creatures and the average wheat field could probably out perform a chicken farm in an IQ test.

The average anything could out perform a chicken in anything but fear and stupidity. We used to raise a few for eggs and meat. We had to keep the chicks away from water deeper than 1". If they got into anything deeper they drowned.

Masu writes: "The gliding club where I fly got a complaint one day about gliders flying over a chicken farm. Evidently chickens are really dumb and if the shadow passes over the transparent roof they think it is a huge hawk or eagle and panic. It appears that's what happened and several hundred died of heart failure."

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One word: kites

I like to fly kites and even outfit them with miniature TV cameras and a downlink. I think a good Hawk-shaped delta-wing box kite should do the trick. A large one. Reliable breezes for most of the day will keep it flying without a lot of hand-holding. I could probably anchor the tether to a sturdy fencepost or something.

I have a mind to equip it with a camera (with fixed zoom) and downlink, and record the action. Then, sit back and enjoy the fruits of my efforts.

Isn't there a Pulletzer Prize for stuff like this?

-e

I would use a dual line kite that you can control. A couple of low swoops over the chicken farm with a hawk shaped kite should have the desired effect. An even better idea would be to host a kite flying contest for school kids in the paddock directly up wind of the farm.

You can see this is an engineering site. Take a simple idea and before long it's all out high tech war against chicken farmers. I just love it.

I like this site it is so..... useful??? err well something. That what you get with a BS or Masters in an Engineering field. My friends when I was single used to say about the Engineering Dept at school, that the odds were good, if you didn't mind the goods being odd.

Even nicer is that there are people who even out the odds and we come up with odds and ends.

Once you've bottomed out with PL ltg or dimming , free sunlight thru windows or skylight is the only remaining choice to save energy . At nite tho , or blackout specs you're back to you're lowest cost electric moonlite ltg . Cost saving at this point is probably more fruitful in the realm of comparison shopping for materials & labor , energy efficient motors, timers, or methods to increase flock yield .

Hmmm, and no one has yet suggested raising sightless chickens and using blind workers.

I like the chickens that can see. They panic more.

Jazzy1oh1:

Good point .. I never considered that!

I think the best idea would be to ditch the whole chicken part and go straight to genetically engineering a cloning system that could grow just the bits you need like chicken legs and eggs.

Use the amonia to get energy out of it.