5 Tips to Help Indoor Growers Improve Energy Efficiency
Nowadays, the pressure on global food supply is increasing. The continued urbanization and population growth make the land shortage even worse. Thus, more and more growers utilize indoor growing such as greenhouses and vertical farms to increase food production. However, archiving profitable cultivation is not easy. Expenses of the labor, artificial grow lights, energy, and others are of high cost to remain the optimal environment for plants. Except for labor cost, energy is the largest cost in indoor cultivation. Therefore, energy efficiency is critical. An energy-efficient indoor growing system can help growers save cost significantly.
Want to know how to lower energy cost in indoor growing?
Read this post, we will show you 5 effective tips to improve energy efficiency.
What is energy efficiency
In simple words, energy efficiency refers to use less energy to get the same result. Indoor growing needs various equipment for heating, cooling, and lighting the plants. Fans, air conditioners, heating machines, artificial grow lights, and other equipment consume a large amount of energy. But many indoor growing rooms consume more energy than they really need. That is why energy efficiency is critical. It can minimize energy waste and reduce energy cost. With improved energy efficiency, growers are able to reap more profits without compromising plant quality, production, and yields.
Tips to improve energy efficiency
Generally, energy efficiency is improved by reducing and optimizing energy consumption. Eliminating unnecessary energy consumption is one of the key factors for improving energy efficiency. Here we have 5 tips to help you improve energy efficiency, including using energy-efficient grow lights, monitoring energy consumption, setting plan to improve energy efficiency, cleaning, maintaining, and upgrading the grow room.
1. Use energy-efficient grow lights
It goes without saying that artificial lights are important for plant growth. Regardless of greenhouses or vertical farms, artificial lights are irreducible for providing lighting. A survey indicates that lighting expends up to 50% of the total electricity consumption. Therefore, using energy-efficient LED grow lights can help you lower electricity bill. A 800W LED grow light can replace a 1000W HPS light, saving 20% energy without compromising light levels. A 300W LED grow light can also save up to 50% energy by replacing a 600W MH light. Although the initial costs of LED grow lights are higher than conventional light, it is worth the extra cost because of the declining price and increasing efficiency.
2. Monitor energy consumption
Monitoring energy consumption can figure out the actual condition of energy usage. And then you can find which equipment consumed energy over required. You may be surprised by the result that even a small equipment can use a lot of electricity. Use the monitoring devices to help you have a more precise result for further action. Monitoring energy consumption solely does not make senses. It should be carried out based on weekly or monthly metric to calculate the energy consumption along with production. For example, you can monitor the energy consumed for producing per pound of flower in a month.
3. Set a plan to improve energy efficiency
After knowing the actual energy consumption condition of your indoor growing room, is time to set a plan to improve energy efficiency. You can set a goal of energy efficiency that is acceptable. Since operating a growth space still requires significant energy consumption, the goal should be a long-term target of about three to five years. Then, list the possible ways to improve energy efficiency and identify the feasible one. These ways may include using more efficient equipment or turn off the equipment when not needed. Please note that do not plan the energy efficiency improvement during peak months only. Otherwise, you may set a goal on incomplete and inaccurate data.
4. Cleanup and maintain the grow room
Except for the equipment in your growing room, the structure of grow room itself should also be taken into account. It sounds cleaning and maintenance are nothing to do with energy efficiency. Have you ever suffered the serious pets or disease problems when growing plants? Or found the growing factors such as temperature and humidity do not match your settings? If so, you had better cleanup and maintain your grow room. Just imagine there is a leak on a window of the grow rooms. Heating or cooling devices work continuously to reach the temperature or humidity you set. This results the waste and extra cost of energy. Furthermore, pest and disease can enter through the leaks of the grow room.
5. Upgrade your indoor growing room frequently
Technology is growing faster than you can imagine. In addition, as research continues, information on plants continues to emerge. Upgrading your indoor growing room with the advanced technology and lasted research frequently allows higher energy efficiency and lower cost. According to the newest information, you can know the actual needs of plants and control the growing environment more precisely. Take artificial grow light as an example. Growers used to utilize HPS grow lights for growing plants. But HPS grow lights are high neat generated, which may cause the tip burn. In contrast, LED grow lights generate less heat than HPS grow lights. Moreover, with HPS grow lights operate t about 1.7 μmol/J while LED grow lights can reach up to 3.0 μmol/J. It means that LED grow lights can produce more photons when consuming the same amount of energy. It is obvious that LED grow lights have higher energy efficiency and better for plant growth. But many growers still using conventional grow lights because they don’t upgrade the grow room. They have no idea of the efficiency of LED grow lights. Similarly, upgrading the ventilation fans, diesel pumps, and other items of your grow room to more efficient one can lead to higher energy efficiency.
Conclusion
Reducing energy consumption and optimize energy usage can help you improve the energy efficiency. Don’t hesitate to take action to improve your energy efficiency, because it makes you easier to gain more profits while save energy cost. If you still using conventional grow lights, replacing them to more efficient LED grow lights can be your first step to increase energy efficiency. If you have any problem about LED grow lights, please feel free to contact us. Atop is always ready to provide customized lighting solution based on your needs.
