
World's Largest Solar Plant Sets Itself Ablaze Due to Misaligned Mirrors - enlightenedfool
http://hothardware.com/news/worlds-largest-solar-plant-sets-itself-ablaze-due-to-misaligned-mirrors
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internaut
I am fascinated by heliostats.

Heliostats (sun tracker) can provide natural light indoors. This is useful
especially during dark winter months. A more advanced application is to
capture the natural light using fibre optics and use natural light in place of
artificial lights.

The principal advantage here is that the colour spectrum of light changes
during the course of a day. This has a significant affect on your sleeping
patterns and mental health. It is known for example that in early summer
months there is a rise in suicides. This is attributed to people feeling like
they have lots of energy from nowhere, but they still are stuck in the
winter/spring (natural) depressed state. The rise in energy coupled with low
mood produce spur of the moment suicidal behavior.

Logically one can use this information to ameliorate mental health problems of
anxiety, depression. I foresee a household system that anticipates your mental
state accurately, perhaps using a combination of facial recognition coupled
with scent analysis, and then deploys some subtle aromatherapy and adapts the
natural lighting to something more conducive. This would also be useful for
enhancing productivity more generally.

Did I mention that natural light is free of charge? :-)

There are actually very few heliostat natural light solutions out there, and
certainly not for the average person. On the other hand it makes for a great
DIY project.

Heliostats can also delete your heating bill with simple methods (they make it
sound complicated in commercial literature, but it is just pointing a fucking
mirror at a tank of water painted black.)

There are lots of homemade heliostat systems out there but to my knowledge, no
books on how to do it. In my view every home should have a natural light
solution, it seems fair somehow. Besides how cool is it that you can point
natural light 'up' or in any direction using fibre cable? That will never get
old for me and I'm not even an optics geek.

~~~
internaut
If anybody wants to see a cool artificial light that mimics natural light well
take a look at coelux:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ4TJ4-kkDw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ4TJ4-kkDw)

It is imperfect (costs too much) but it'll give a good idea of why I think
heliostat/optic cable/natural light is something more people need in their
lives.

