For

years, Hong Kong is known as Pearl of the Orient. The original of this name
might due to the non-stoppable lightings across the Victoria Harbor. In some
people eyes, lightings means prosperous, advanced. Yet, the consequences
behind are very costly. It takes hundreds of millions or even billions of cash for
the bills of electricity, Besides, the brightness of night sky in Hong Kong is about
120 times above stranded. In the age of energy shortage, Light up all the bulbs is
not only a luxury, but also an environmental problem.

It has been shown that about 20% of electricity is used for lighting worldwide
and about 40% of the electricity bills are from the street lighting and the term
light pollution is becoming more and more common to our ears as the negative
effects of the problem is more and more serious. Destroying the night sky is
already discussed very much. Recent research shows that expose to light at night
during rest will decrease the secretion of a hormone called melatonin, which
helps in fighting carcinogens. Yet, other then legislation, there are ways to ease
the problem of light pollution in scientific points of view.

In the original design of street lamp, light is distributed to all direction evenly if
there are not any covers. You may imagine light travels along a spherical path,
which the sphere is centered at the luminaire with decreasing amount of energy
when the light is traveled far and far away. Once the sphere reach any obstacles,
may be a road, may be a wall, it stops there. That is why if you place rod between
the luminaire and the road, you can see a more blurred image at the place far
away from the lamp.

Now, researchers have come up with a new device, which consist of a microlens
array, total internal reflection (TIR) lens and a reflecting cavity for LED luminaire
to reflect the light going upward to the ground. Reflecting light to the ground is
not very hard if you place a mirror on top of the lamp. The advantage of the
device can not only reflecting light to the ground, but also concentrate the light
to a specific region and the region is not necessarily to be a circle. It can be a
rectangular shape to fit the shape of a road or even a zigzag path.

The microlens is a very tine lens with glass like material with some wave like
pattern on the surface of them that can let light rays to pass through and refract
them. To make the light rays become more parallel and collimated, a TIR lens is
required. The TIR lens shape is like a lamp cover with a polycarbonate interior,
which reflect the light going from different angle to a particular angle with
reference to a straight line. After passing the TIR lens, all the light rays will be
nearly parallel to each other.

You may consider the whole device as a concave mirror in the interior to reflect
light from the light source. If the most of the light can be directed to the objected
region, there will not be any waste of energy as light can be regarded as a form of
energy. As a result, the places other than the objected one, may be the residential
area, may be the area for stargazing, will not be disturbed by light and the
negative effects mentioned above will then disappear.