History

UBC’s Structured Surface Physics lab has been conducting basic and applied research in the lighting field of use since 1994. One interesting application was the use of natural daylight to illuminate interiors of buildings but the reflectivity of existing low cost materials was limited to approximately 90-95%. This limitation made it impractical to bring useful amounts of light deep into a building as up to 10% of the light was lost on each reflection.

Recent advances in reflective films now allow low cost materials to reflect 99% of the light that hits their surface. With this technical barrier resolved the challenge became a design and engineering challenge to develop a low cost solar collection system that would be capable of capturing sufficient sunlight for a practical lighting system. The research team at UBC successfully demonstrated a prototype system in a custom-built test facility in 2007.

Further development and refinement of the system continued throughout 2007 and 2008 until the technology was ready for full scale building trials. In the summer of 2008 the first commercial building demonstration units were installed on the third floor of a building at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Having achieved successful demonstration of the technology, SunCentral was incorporated in July 2008 as the commercial vehicle to take this exiting new advance to market. The initial work to demonstrate the technology was funded by NSERC, BC Hydro and 3M Company.