| A New Approach |
A New Approach to Daylighting
The Company
Sunflower© Corporation is developing a family of natural lighting systems that use sunlight to fully illuminate interior spaces, creating ideal light for building occupants. Many studies have shown that natural light significantly improves learning and productivity when compared to artificial light. Sunflower’s systems deliver sunlight so effectively that electric lighting can be turned off during most of the daylight hours, saving electricity and reducing heat generation. The systems incorporate electric lighting to provide supplemental illumination when the sun is blocked by clouds, and for nighttime lighting.
Product Description
Sunflower’s first daylighting system designed for schools and offices is called Sundolier™. It tracks the sun throughout the day, collecting sunlight above the roof and delivering it to the room below. The system then redirects the captured sunlight across the ceiling, delivering consistent illumination over a 1,000 square foot room.
Click here for the paper on Sundolier presented at Solar 2006, the American Solar Energy Society's annual conference held 7-12 July 2006 in Denver, Colorado.
Sundolier delivers the following values:
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Natural, full-spectrum sunlight which studies show improves student and office worker performance with significant health benefits as well
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Reduced electricity costs for lighting and cooling systems
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Elimination of the need for standard interior lighting systems, since backup lighting is included in the Sundolier design
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Extra points for daylighting of buildings seeking LEED™, ENERGY STAR® and Green Building certification
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Elegantly-simple solar technology
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Feel-good lighting ambience, excellent lighting environment
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A/V capability at the touch of a button, dims natural light when needed
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Contributes to reversing global warming
The Market
Sundolier™ is entering the market with a focus on schools. We believe the Sundolier system creates a compelling justification through the combination of the many benefits of natural light and substantial financial savings. In the US, school construction totaled $20 billion in 2005 and a similar number is projected for 2006. About $6.5 billion of this is forecast for the southwest, where Sunflower’s product values are optimized. In Colorado alone there are almost 33,000 classrooms, with almost 600 added every year. Most existing school classrooms have few windows or skylights to let in sunlight.
In the long-term, many
additional markets exist for Sunflower's beam daylighting systems.
These include big box stores, which have significant cooling challenges,
commercial office buildings where high-quality light will improve
productivity, and retailers such as clothing stores whose customers
place special value on natural light.
Technological Challenges
Sunflower has coupled an elegant design concept with extensive computerized optical ray tracing calculations and high-performance optical materials to optimize design and performance. In addition, Sunflower has developed hardware and software to allow precise tracking of the sun anywhere in the world. Sunflower has applied for patent protection for these innovations.
The Sunflower Team
The most important ingredient of the Sunflower Corporation—even more important than the specific daylighting technology itself—is the dedicated, talented, and experienced design and business team at its core. The founders have 100 person years of research and development experience between them, and almost 50 years of experience in the business world.
- Gary Cler, Vice President, Engineering – Gary is a mechanical engineer with over 20 years experience evaluating innovative technology, designing and fabricating energy-related products, and managing energy-efficiency projects.
- Eric Gertler, Treasurer– Eric has worked as a financial manager for 25 years, concentrating on venture capital funded software startup companies since 1997.
- John Hutson, Vice President, Engineering – John is an electrical engineer and product manager with 20 years of experience in the electronics industry, designing products and bringing them to market. He also holds an MBA from Yale.
- Larry Kinney, Vice President, Product Development – Larry has been active in energy conservation related research, design and development for over 30 years, and has broad experience in energy efficient refrigeration, lighting, and daylighting technologies.
- Ross McCluney, Vice President, Research – A PhD physicist, Ross spent nearly 30 years working for the Buildings Research Division of the Florida Solar Energy Center, where he currently serves as Principal Research Scientist.
- Peter Novak, CEO, A global business leader with proven success in the development of high-performance organizations that bring the customer to the center of an organizations mission, he had a distinguished career with Cooper Industries before joining Sunflower. Peter leads Sunflower’s initiatives to bring innovative daylighting products to market with the objective of greatly improving the lighting environment for our customers while saving energy and reducing harmful emissions.
- Jim Walsh, President – As founder and president of Energy Service Associates, Jim has more than 15 years experience providing operational management services to public and private sector clients with an emphasis on schools.
=====Last update: 01/05/07=====
