Skylights: The Flourescent Conspiracy
June 12, 1995

by Steve Baer, Zomeworks Corporation

This article originally appeared in "Solar Mind," Issue 15--1993.

New discoveries in photovoltaic cells and solar thermal power plants
are announced every few months, but unfortunately we are forgetting
old uses of the sun faster than we are discovering new ones.

Why do new stores have no skylights? A few weeks ago I visited an enormous
new single story toy store. Shelves of plastic toys reached up towards a
heaven of rows of flourescent lights. The huge store was using 50 to 100
horsepower of electricity to light unpleasantly what a few percent of the
roof in skylights would light pleasantly. (At 1 watt per square foot the
same power running electric motors could lift cars parked bumper-to-bumper
over the same enormous floor about 1 foot a minute.) At least 100 acres of
these toy stores, grocery stores, fabric stores, dime stores, drug stores
and auto supply stores have been put up in the last few years in
Albuquerque. They gave forgotten how to use natural lighting. Ten megawatts
of electricity need never have been generated if the architects could
remember how single story buildings were made 75 or 100 years ago.

Why have we forgotten how to use the sun? If you shine enough flourescent
light on me, I also forget. I come under a spell, a new outline to my
personality appears under the strong electric lights, like a picture
revealed under UV lights. Struggling with my flourescent form in the huge
new stores, I notice strange people in the aisles, the flourescent gang,
figures you don't see elsewhere--a deeply tanned 60-year-old blonde with a
low-cut blouse, a man dressed as if he were an assistant cowboy. I am not
myself. I simply don't form the sentence for the store manager, "I wish you
would put in skylights or clerestories and turn off these unpleasant
electric lights."

Today if you read the press you find our hope for solar energy is placed on
new photovoltaic panels, not on old-fashioned skylights, but if you take a
typical photovoltaic panel and pull the expensive silicon crystals away
from the front glass and use the plain glass in a skylight, it will admit
not twice as much, but at least ten times a much light as could be produced
by the photovoltaic cells powering electric lights--and most of us prefer
the quality of natural light.

Is there a force weaning us from mother nature's free and natural sun so we
will grow up to purchase an electric substitute? If you discuss the matter
of lighting with a store manager while 100 kilowatts of electricity glow
around him, you suspect that your protests about electricity and desire for
the sun suggest the tiresome whining of a child being weaned.

God gave us the sun long ago. It is no use questioning whether the sun is a
good energy source or whether it would have been better if he'd used
flourescent bulbs. I felt the question was out of reach until a
conversation with a man who works for astronomers and materials scientists
setting up heliostats which reflect sun onto targets and solar furnaces. I
was unsettled by his offhand answer that it would be impossible to use a
giant heliostat to light and thaw a north entrance of a shopping center:

He: It's too bright.

Me: But with reflective losses the reflected sun is less bright than
    the real sun.

He: Yeah, you got a good point, but I tell you it's just too bright.

Me: Maybe, if you have both the real and the reflected sun shining, but
    this spot is otherwise in shadow.

He: Well, you'll see.

This was the first man I'd ever met competent to discuss the sun as if it
were simply a fixture, a huge incandescent bulb. He only dealt with it
because his job required it. I was able to look at the sun through his
eyes. I saw that except for habit the sun would never be accepted today.
Sure there would be a few fans, but not enough to even test-market
it--think of the glare, the sun burn, its unpredictable appearance. How
many people die every day from accident because the sun gets in their eyes?
Mother nature would be swamped with lawsuits.

Is the unnecessary use of electricity in endless rows of flourescent lights
like the self-imposed exercise of someone doing calisthenics? Are we
training for an adventure to come, where there will be no sun? Will we move
underground into enormous clammy galleries or set off in space through the
dark on the way to a new star?

Is our society more interested in expensive photovoltaic power plants than
cheap skylights because solar power plants could be switched to nuclear
power without the public knowing?

I found in investigating these stores with their endless flourescent
ceilings I began to invest in the problem, savoring the insult of each new
flourescent bulb glowing during the bright day. When finally, on my third
visit, I overcame the flourescent spell and protested to a store manager,
something in me was delighted at his guarded hostility. For a moment I
thought he might throw me out of Walmart for my impertinence in questioning
their judgement bathing their customers in the 60 cycle electric
illumination and refusing the sun. The tense moment passed like a huge
ocean swell that you anticipate breaking in a wave, but merely lifts you up
and lets you down. As we sank in a trough the manager confided that,
although helpless to use the sun here, he had added skylights to his own
house and that he had suspected I was snooping for their competitor K-Mart.

Further upsetting in my quest to corner the flourescent conspirators in
their acres of chain stores was a visit to the Price Club. The Albuquerque
Price Club has 3 per cent of the roof in skylights. That should be light
enough on this sunny day, but here all the lights were on anyway. I found
the manager and more-or-less demanded that he turn the lights off. No, he
wouldn't. He pointed to the new addition where he had been able to double
the skylights (but the electric lights were on there too) and explained
that all the new stores were like this new addition. Phoenix, L. A.,
Denver--all skylights, no need for daytime electric lights. But did they
leave their electric lights on anyway, as he did?

There must be a flourescent conspiracy, but as I discovered when I thought
I had trapped a conspirator by the coffee shop at Walmart, the conspiracy's
energy and information are in waves, not objects. When you counter a
conspirator, you catch nothing, since the problem is the wave, caused by a
distant economic storm, not the store manager who merely rides the wave.
Everything is still a mystery. Why would the Price Club manager pay $10 per
hour to keep a light switch on, even though the store is flooded with
sunlight?