“The 2020’s Will Be The Decade of The Vertical Agriculture Revolution”- Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google

“The 2020’s Will Be The Decade of The Vertical Agriculture Revolution”

- Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google

MAY 30, 2018, BY SCOTT MASSEY

Indoor agriculture has gained an explosive amount of traction in past few years as it has been recognized as a viable solution to solve food and sustainability issues by offering the potential to grow and distribute produce near areas of demand.

     For a planet with declining resources, indoor agriculture is a key component to improving food safety while reducing waste and growing more nutritious food in highly controlled environments that utilize electric lighting, thermal, and sensing controls. These include a 90% reduction in water usage, reduced transportation pollution and elimination of soil and additives. With the rising population and the decreasing costs of LED energy, there’s never been a better time to explore electrification of the indoor agriculture industry, which has the potential to fuel the future of sustainability.

     However, there were still a number of technical hurdles that must be overcome for this technology to have a meaningful impact in yields of food production. The largest of which is astronomical energy costs due to indoor lighting preventing indoor agriculture from being a financially viable enterprise without dependence on government subsidies. In this industry glance, we met electrical and software engineering representatives to hear about their methods to reduce the operational cost and increase the profitability of CEA (controlled environment agriculture).

    The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) conducts research and development relating to the generation, delivery, and use of electricity for the benefit of the public. An independent, nonprofit organization, EPRI brings together its scientists and engineers as well as experts from academia and industry to help address challenges in electricity, including reliability, efficiency, health, safety and the environment. EPRI's members represent more than 90 percent of the electricity generated and delivered in the United States, and international participation extends to 40 countries.

Q&A: Frank Sharp, Senior Technical Leader, Energy Utilization, EPRI.

What is the best form factor in this industry? 

       EPRI is researching CEA because of its potential to address issues related to population growth, food security, food safety, water access, water use, sustainability, grid load, local job creation, land usage, and smart city integration, all for community benefit. That said, we see three primary emerging forms and each has benefits:

1. The converted warehouse, vertical farm, custom building

• This provides an opportunity to use underutilized or underperforming real estate in areas that often have limited economic potential. These facilities offer the ability to yield high quality produce in large volumes near population centers via their use of technologies to maintain ideal growing conditions.

• 2. Converted shipping containers or pods

• This approach is highly mobile, is often modular, and utilize modern technologies to maintain growing conditions. These facilities offer the ability to reliability deliver fresh produce to targeted communities and applications and use minimal resources.

• 3. Augmented greenhouses where heat and lighting are added to keep the greenhouse operating year-round.

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• This format has a lower operational cost per square foot since it’s lighting load is only utilized when sunlight is not available

     These facilities have the ability to deliver crops in large scale and deliver fresh produce year-round to markets. We found a lot of unanswered questions about each of these types of controlled environment agriculture and they all warrant significantly more research as we move forward. We are working with utilities and CEA groups to better leverage current technology to forward each of these formats for the public benefit.

     In addition to these three forms, there are other forms developing like aquaculture, indoor shrimp production, and insects for protein.

     Note, established industries like traditional greenhouses and floriculture operations are also very common and will continue to expand and be utilized. These operations are typically not researched by EPRI since their operations and technologies are well established. EPRI does follow work in these areas and will engage to evaluate new process and technologies in these operations if they emerge.   

With major e Coli and other pathogen outbreak concerns plaguing the food landscape, CEA is a viable solution if implemented correctly. What measures are you implementing now to reduce the likelihood of a pathogen outbreak, or warn a consumer that the food is not safe?

     Controlled environment agriculture can reduce the likelihood of the spread of foodborne pathogens due to its ability to control the environment and limit exposure to outside factors. But there is still a risk and all agriculture facilities (indoor or out) should remain vigilant to maintain food safety and security in the future. Continued research into efficacies and future technologies will help reduce this risk further.

Energy is one of the most expensive components for an indoor growing operation. What is your number of grams that can be grown on the farm in a given month, then divide this by the number of KWH consumed per month? Please give more configuration details, pictures, and growth trial data from these trials.

      While energy is one of the more significant costs of growing indoors, this industry has great potential to expand. This expansion will be driven by the need for fresh produce by expanding the population, but the CEA industry must focus on improving its operational efficiency where it can be a vital part of a further efficiently electrified economy.

      Benefits derived from improved operational efficiency and higher yield can also help CEA facilities minimize labor costs, which are typically the highest costs. The combination of improved technologies, operational efficiency improvements, and maximized labor costs can help assure CEA facilities that their products are competitive.

     CEA integration with an electrified economy will also make CEA a key part of future smart cities.

     The smart city integration of CEA will be further enhanced by the use of grid-integrated renewable energy and other distributed energy. As these resources come online, access to affordable and clean energy resources will help shift the energy costs of CEA facilities.  We will be exploring this aspect of CEA in great detail during our 2018 Electrification conference in Long Beach this summer.

     With further electrification and demand on the grid, additional research is critical to learning how to support grid stability and reliability as more CEA operations come online.

We are working with utilities and CEA operations around the world to learn more about emerging technologies and identifying proper placement of these operations on the existing grid.