Growing up everyone had at least one friend with a pet reptile. But whether it was a snake, iguana or turtle, the most memorable thing wasn’t the animal itself. Rather, it was that mesmerizing reddish-pink glow of the infrared heat lamp inside its cage. Localized, targeted and direct, the lamp was an efficient way to keep that cold-blooded friend comfortable.
What if the same technology could be adapted for humans?
Crazy as it sounds, MITs Senseable City Lab is looking to do just that, reports Wired magazine. Given that commercial buildings account for 20 percent of national energy consumption but are rarely filled to capacity, this cost is a massive drain on our wallets — and a waste of energy to boot. So researchers are hoping to decrease this energy usage through hyper-localized beams of infrared heat on a human scale.
While HVAC systems blanket entire spaces with hot or cool air, Local Warming, as the concept has been dubbed, uses LED bulbs to directly beam rays of infrared light onto people, heating up the area around them.. A WiFi-enabled tracker allows this system to sense when a human is present and beam heat down like a spotlight from a ceiling rig.
Similar to track lighting, the system is comprised of a large infrared bulb surrounded by rotating mirrors that can direct the light in a focused beam. The current iteration is bulky, but future prototypes will use smaller LEDs to adapt the technology for home use. “It’s almost like having a your personal sun,” says Carlo Ratti, a professor in the Senseable City Lab.
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For now, perhaps the best use of Local Warming is in airy spaces where energy use is least efficient, like lobbies. Revolving doors have helped save thousands of dollars in energy costs but the addition of localized heat where foot traffic is less predictable can, according to Ratti, reduce energy consumption up to 90 percent.
Cheap, practical delivery of heat is the goal now, but the Energy division of Advanced Research Projects Agency (the folks who brought us the internet) is looking to invest in further research and development. Down the road this technology has the potential to free architects from the aesthetic and design constraints imposed by traditional HVAC systems for even more efficient and energy-saving innovation.
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Tag: energy costs
You Won’t Believe How Much These Smart Streetlights Could Save Us
A sprawling expanse of illuminated city blocks is beautiful to behold. It’s also incredibly wasteful. Dutch mechanical engineer Chintan Shah discovered that keeping the lights on at night in Europe cost the continent more than 10 billion Euros each year and accounted for more than 40% of the government’s energy use. It also created 40 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, giving a whole new meaning to the term “light pollution.”
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Shah’s company, Tvilight, created a motion sensor for streetlights that dims the light when people aren’t around and restores it to full brightness when triggered by human (or animal) movement. Shah’s sensors can also be adjusted to their location. For uncommonly used places like empty parking lots, the streetlights can be dimmed up to 70% when they’re not needed. For well-trafficked roadways and neighborhood streets, streetlamps may be dimmed only 30% to 40%, in order to keep areas secure. Tvilight’s sensors have already been installed throughout entire municipalities in Ireland and Holland, saving those countries up to 60% on energy costs. Now, Shah and his group are in talks with officials in Germany, Canada and in the U.S. — in Los Angeles. In other words, Shah’s bright idea is taking off.
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