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Grow Closer With Light Polymers’ GrowBlade® Horticultural Lighting
Grow Closer With Light Polymers’ GrowBlade® Horticultural Lighting
Light Polymers - GrowBlade Test-Site, 2018 (Photo: Business Wire)
May 24, 2018
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Light Polymers, a nanochemistry innovator specializing in lyotropic liquid crystals, is launching a Beta-test program for its innovative GrowBlade® horticultural lighting. GrowBlade flat-panels use Light Polymers’ Crystallin® remote phosphor films to let indoor farmers grow closer, delivering even, consistent lighting in a range of rich crop-specific spectra. GrowBlades have a long service life, running cooler with less spectrum shift and lumen drop over time than conventional LED grow lights. Better quality full-spectrum light in a thin, wide-area form factor is a key to higher farm productivity.
“Light Polymers has been busy starting production of our breakthrough Crystallin film, and developing specialty lighting designs that are eye-safe and comfortable, with extraordinarily rich spectra”
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“As innovators in a range of specialty lighting markets, Light Polymers knows the importance of engaging potential customers as part of our product development process,” said Sandor Schoichet, VP of Grow Products at Light Polymers Lighting. “To this end, Light Polymers is opening up its GrowBlade Beta-test program to select vertical farm and controlled environment growers, to gain real world production experience and better understand the specific needs of our customers.”
GrowBlade Edge 300 and 600 panels (approximately 300x300 mm or 1’x1’, and 300x600 mm or 1’x2’) will be available to select early adopters starting in June 2018. Longer GrowBlade Edge 1200 and 1500 models (approximately 1’x4’ and 1’x5’) will be available in late 2018. Both models have a slender form-factor (just 12.5 mm thick - not including the remote, dimmable LED driver) and will be among the earliest products certified to the new UL-8800 horticultural lighting standard. Initial Beta-test lights are available in two custom spectra, with more tailored crop-specific spectra to come based on customer input. Introductory pricing for GrowBlade Edge 300 and 600 models is set at $119 and $219 respectively.
“Light Polymers has been busy starting production of our breakthrough Crystallin film, and developing specialty lighting designs that are eye-safe and comfortable, with extraordinarily rich spectra,” said Marc McConnaughey, Chairman of the Board of Light Polymers Lighting. “We are excited to begin production of the GrowBlade and our other specialty lighting products based on our Crystallin film technology.”
GrowBlades achieve a unique level of horticultural lighting performance by leveraging the unique capabilities of our Crystallin remote phosphor film, which eliminates ‘point-based’ lighting issues common to other LED lights. Instead of assembling a variety of specialized LEDs into a bar or a box, GrowBlades use sheets of Crystallin film to down-convert the output of a simple blue LED array into a smooth, fully diffused spectrum with even edge-to-edge distribution. GrowBlade spectra can easily extend into the red and far-red range critical to flowering and fruiting, while blocking problematic blue and UV wavelengths below 420 nm. Formulating spectrum with Crystallin technology lets us move beyond simple narrow-band spectra to explore synergies across the multiple wavelengths that affect crop quality.
With cool, evenly distributed, high quality light, GrowBlades can be mounted closer to your plants for greater vertical density, higher yields, and improved crop consistency, for higher overall productivity.
Contact us now for updates and early release notification.
About Light Polymers
Light Polymers is a nanochemistry company with deep domain knowledge and expertise in lyotropic liquid crystals, which have many applications including OLED displays, LED lighting and building materials. Light Polymers recently debuted a family of human-centric eye-safe task and study lighting. Founded in 2013 in San Francisco, Light Polymers has over 50 patents issued and pending for its water-based lyotropic liquid crystal nanochemistry. For more information, visit http://www.lightpolymers.com/.
Contacts
Write2Market for Light Polymers
Casey Stokes 404-428-2135
casey.stokes@write2market.com
Osram Acquires US ‘Smart Grow’ Lighting Firm
Lighting giant Osram is acquiring Fluence Bioengineering, Inc. of Austin, Texas. The company specialises in LED-based horticultural systems, using Osram LED chips, for a wide variety of applications including vertical farming, especially in urban area
Osram Acquires US ‘Smart Grow’ Lighting Firm
MAY 21, 2018 BY ANNA
Lighting giant Osram is acquiring Fluence Bioengineering, Inc. of Austin, Texas. The company specializes in LED-based horticultural systems, using Osram LED chips, for a wide variety of applications including vertical farming, especially in urban areas.
Potential crops range from salad greens and herbs to medicinal plants. Fluence was founded in 2013, has approximately 95 employees and its 2017 sales were in the mid-double-digit millions of dollars (USD).
LED-based solutions from Fluence can increase harvests up to 25 percent, reducing energy costs by as much as 50 percent and, through the targeted use of light, improving the quality and nutritional content of plants.
Increasing population and continued urbanisation are intensifying the demand for fresh food, especially in densely populated cities around the world.
In addition to growing healthy and tasty food, vertical farms reduce the need for long-distance transportation routes. They also lessen the need for pesticides, fertilisers and excessive water use, and ultimately reduce spoilage.
“Fluence is opening the floodgates to a huge future market,” said Stefan Kampmann, CTO of OSRAM Licht AG. “Its extensive knowledge of the horticulture market and possible applications, combined with Osram’s expertise in lighting technologies, sensors and connectivity, will position us as a leading horticultural solutions provider.”
Osram has increased its involvement in the horticulture sector over the last several years. The company has developed research and specialty luminaires that enable tailor-made light recipes to be controlled for specific plant types.
In 2017, Osram invested in the Munich-based startup Agrilution which develops grow boxes with LED lighting for home use.
Fluence Bioengineering, upon closing, will be positioned within Osram’s Professional and Industrial Applications segment in the Specialty Lighting business unit.
Grow Closer With Light Polymers’ GrowBlade® Horticultural Lighting
Grow Closer With Light Polymers’ GrowBlade® Horticultural Lighting
SAN FRANCISCO--Light Polymers, a nanochemistry innovator specializing in lyotropic liquid crystals, is launching a Beta-test program for its innovative GrowBlade® horticultural lighting. GrowBlade flat-panels use Light Polymers’ Crystallin™ remote phosphor film technology to let indoor farmers grow closer, delivering even, consistent lighting in a customizable range of rich crop-specific spectra. The GrowBlade has a long service life, running cooler and experiencing less spectrum shift and lumen drop over time than conventional LED grow lights. Better quality light in a thin, wide-area form factor is one key to higher farm productivity.
“As innovators in a range of specialty lighting markets, Light Polymers knows the importance of engaging potential customers effectively as part of our product development process,” said Sandor Schoichet, VP of Grow Products at Light Polymers Lighting. “To this end, Light Polymers is opening up its GrowBlade Beta-testing program to select vertical farm and controlled environment growers, with the twin goals of gaining real world production experience while better understanding the evolving needs of participating growers.”
GrowBlade Edge 300 and 600 panels (approximately 300x300mm or 1’x1’, and 300x600mm or 1’x2’) will be available to select early adopters starting in late May 2018. Longer GrowBlade Edge 1200 and 1500 models will become available in late 2018. Initial Beta-test lights are available in two standard spectra, with new tailored spectra to be added based on customer input. Introductory pricing for GrowBlade Edge 300 and 600 models is set at $129 and $189 respectively.
“Light Polymers has been busy starting production of our Crystallin film, developing specialty lighting product designs that are eye-safe and comfortable, with extraordinarily rich spectra,” said Marc McConnaughey, Chairman of the Board of Light Polymers Lighting. “We are excited to begin production of the GrowBlade and our other specialty lighting product lines based on our Crystallin film technology.”
GrowBlade lighting achieves a unique level of performance by leveraging our breakthrough Crystallin remote phosphor film, which eliminates ‘point-based’ lighting issues common to other LED lights. Instead of converting blue LED light to specific frequencies on each LED diode and then assembling a variety of specialized LEDs, GrowBlades use sheets of Crystallin film to convert the output of a blue LED array into an evenly distributed, consistent, fully diffused spectrum, while blocking problematic blue and UV wavelengths below 420nm.
This design also results in a slender form-factor just 15mm thick (not including the remote, dimmable LED driver). With evenly distributed light, efficient operation, and a low-profile, GrowBlade light can be placed closer to your plants to improve yields and crop consistency for greater productivity.
Contact us now for updates and early release notification.
About Light Polymers
Light Polymers is a nanochemistry company with deep domain knowledge and expertise in lyotropic liquid crystals, which have many applications including OLED displays, LED lighting and building materials. Light Polymers recently debuted a family of human-centric eye-safe task and study lighting. Founded in 2013 in San Francisco, Light Polymers has over 50 patents issued and pending for its water-based lyotropic liquid crystal nanochemistry. For more information, visit http://www.lightpolymers.com/.
Netherlands: 9 Hectares Indoors Compared To 90 Hectares Outdoors
Netherlands: 9 Hectares Indoors Compared To 90 Hectares Outdoors
Siberia is an innovative enterprise that grows greenhouse vegetables in Maasbree. It was established in early 2016 by Peter van Dijk and Luc Willemssen who also own Van Dijck Groenteproducties, one of the largest suppliers of outdoor-grown leafy greens to the retail and processing sectors in The Netherlands. The partners established Siberia to meet the increasing demand for fresh produce in the winter. Lettuce and leafy vegetables are grown in a mobile gutter system in a new, hypermodern greenhouse. Siberia’s innovative and unique cultivation strategy means that a virtually identical volume of produce can be grown on 9 hectares compared to the 90 hectares that would be required to grow the same amount of lettuce outdoors.
When they began building the Siberia facilities, Van Dijck and Willemssen were committed to creating an efficient and eco-friendly greenhouse. They consulted Cogas Zuid, a specialist in ultra-modern greenhouse installations and certified Philips LED Horti partner. Advisors from Philips Lighting’s Horticulture department provided input on the best light recipe to use and calculated potential yields and return on investment for the crops grown.
Siberia’s 9 hectare greenhouse would be used to grow lettuce and leafy greens like bok choy. The co-owners first considered using HPS (high pressure sodium) lighting, but Philips proposed using LED instead. With LEDs, growers can go to higher light levels, which are really needed for growing lettuce and they can produce more in the winter. LEDs also produce less radiant heat, so there are fewer quality issues with tip burn and inconsistent growth.
The first lettuce and bok choy crops were sown in the new greenhouse in January 2016. It is equipped with a mobile hydroponic gutter system that can be adjusted as the plants grow. The entire process - from sowing to harvesting - takes place under controlled conditions under one roof. A rainwater irrigation system minimizes water usage, and less crop protection products and fertilizers are used compared to outdoors.
The total growing area is 9 hectare. The greenhouse is 6 meters high with 4 meters of space between the LED grow lights and crops. Philips GreenPower LED toplighting modules are used to deliver a light level of 104 μmol/m2/s. According to Philips, these LEDs provide twice as much light output as HPS lights and the entire installation has an efficiency of 2.6 μmol/J. Siberia BV’s customers were so enthusiastic about the locally grown crops available in the winter that they immediately increased their orders. As a result, Siberia BV expanded their operations with another 4 hectares of greenhouse with LED grow lights which opened in June 2017 and has been running at full capacity since.
“Our customers are impressed with the high quality and longer shelf life of the greenhouse crops,” says Grower Tom Willemssen. “The red lettuce has a beautiful dark red color and we are getting heavier and more uniform plants thanks to the controlled growing environment which is what our customers want.” The high light output of the LEDs promotes very fast growth of the plants, shortening the growth cycles. “We can harvest excellent quality crops in about 7 weeks and they are not damaged by the weather compared to those grown outside,” Willemssen.
In the beginning of the project, plant specialists from Philips Lighting supported Siberia in choosing the right lighting set-up and the right light recipe for their crops. Willemssen says, “We know everything about growing crops but we are not experts on lighting so we really appreciated the advice that Philips Lighting gave us. All of their prognoses for yields and length of crop cycles have proved accurate.”
For more information:
Philips
www.philips.com/horti
Publication date: 4/23/2018
What’s The Best Way To Compare Lighting Efficiency?
Posted on 04/26/2018
What’s The Best Way To Compare Lighting Efficiency?
Written by David Kuack
When choosing horticultural lighting, growers need to consider lighting efficiency and how the lighting will be used.
There is a big difference between lighting efficiency for horticulture and lighting efficiency for consumer use. The difference is in who is receiving the light.
“From a human perspective since the early 20th century there was a number of researchers who studied how sensitive the human eye is to the light wavelengths,” said Eden Dubuc, technology leader at Current, powered by GE. “It was discovered that there are receptors in the eyes that collect blue, red and green light. The human eye is most sensitive to yellowish-green light, around 550 nanometers (nm). The reason that humans are really sensitive to this light is because they need to identify good plants as a source of food.
“This color sensitivity of humans varies depending on gender, age and location on the Earth. In order to standardize light measurement, scientists developed a sensitivity curve called a photopic curve that is based on statistical distribution from the world population.”
Dubuc said that it has only been since the 1970s that research has determined plant sensitivity to color. Plants absorb mostly light energy in the range from 400-700 nm, which is defined as photosynthetically active radiation (PAR).
“If white light, which is broad spectrum, is directed at plants, they appear green,” he said. “Plants absorb most of the red and blue light to activate photosynthesis. If a grower wants to create biomass, then blue and red light are the most sensitive to the plants to convert energy in the plants. Even though the ultraviolet (less than 400 nm) and far red (greater than 700 nm) are less useful to the plants for creating biomass, there are some benefits to other aspects of the plants.”
Determining lighting efficiency
Dubuc said lighting efficiency is related to how much electricity goes into the lighting fixture or luminaire and the amount of energy that comes out.
“If 1 watt of electricity is put into a luminaire and 0.5 watt of light comes out, then there is 0.5 watt of heat generated by the luminaire,” he said. “In some luminaires the energy can also be mechanical energy if there are moving parts. If a luminaire doesn’t use active cooling, there aren’t other ways of losing energy. Active cooling is not used in GE luminaires so the watts energy release is divided by two, a portion goes into light and a portion goes into heat.”
For growers trying to determine which type of lamp to use depends on whether they want a broader spectrum and whether the light will be used to keep the plants in a reproductive or vegetative state. Photos courtesy of Farmbox Greens
Dubuc said the same thing happens to the electricity regardless of whether a grower is using a light emitting diode (LED) or high pressure sodium (HPS) luminaire.
“In a LED the light is mostly in the visible range,” he said. “With HPS there can be a lot of infrared radiation so there is heat radiation from the luminaire that has to be taken into account. Subtracting the amount of watts going into a luminaire from the amount of visible light coming out, everything else is heat, either radiation, convection or conduction.”
In regards to the lighting efficiency of luminaires, Dubuc said most growers are now talking about photon efficacy, which is micromoles per joule.
“Micromoles are the quantity of photons,” he said. “Micromoles per second divided by watts creates micromoles per joule, which is photon efficacy. This is an important value when growers are looking at luminaires. This is how growers can compare the efficiency of the luminaire including the ballast and reflector.
“If lighting manufacturers are talking about micromoles per joule, they are measuring the lighting efficiency the same way. If they are using the units, micromoles per joule, it is well defined.”
Dubuc said if growers are using fluorescent lamps, the efficiency is about 1 micromole per joule.
“For a 400-watt metal halide lamp the efficiency is around 1.3 micromoles per joule,” he said. “For a 400-watt HPS there are 1.65 micromoles per joule. For a 1,000-watt double-ended HPS lamp there are 1.85 micromoles per joule.”
Dubuc said for LEDs the efficiency can vary depending on the light color.
“Our GE pink lights have an average of 2.5 micromoles per joule and our purple can go up to 2.8 micromoles per joule,” he said. “Determining which lamp to use will depend on whether growers want a broader spectrum and if they want the light for the plants to be in a more reproductive or more vegetative state.”
Adjusting light spectrum to optimize growth
Dubuc said prior to the introduction of LEDs the only viable lighting options available to growers were HPS, metal halide and fluorescent luminaires.
“The only difference between HPS and metal halide is that there is a different gas in the tube or bulb,” he said. “When the gas mixture in the glass bulb is activated, then the HPS produces yellowish light. When more mercury methyl gas is introduced into a metal halide bulb, it produces a bluer light.
“There are a few companies that tried to tweak the chemical content in the bulbs to get optimized lighting for plants. But the variation is very limited. When researchers started working with LEDs and phosphor, they were able to create different colors and different mixtures. This is when people realized the potential of playing with the spectrum, with the color. LEDs have the full flexibility to optimize the growth of plants because growers have the ability to tweak the spectrum.”
Dubuc said changing the spectrum may change the photon efficacy.
“With white light the spectrum is broader and a broad spectrum means phosphor has been added,” he said. “When more phosphor is added then efficacy is lost. When only blue and red LEDs are used together there is no phosphor in the system. There are currently two efficient LED compounds on the market. InGaN (blue light with peak efficacy at 450 nm) and AllnGaP (red light at peak efficacy at 660 nm) are the most efficient wavelengths for LED technology.”
The ratio of red to blue light impacts the effect on plant growth.
“GE LEDs offer three ratios of red to blue light,” Dubuc said. “We call these reproductive (6:1), vegetative (1:1) and balanced (3:1). The 3:1 ratio has three times more red light energy than blue light energy. If a grower wants the plants to elongate, then more red light is used. Plants exposed to more red light will grow faster and bigger, but will be more fragile.
“Blue energy controls the structure of the plants. If a 1:1 ratio with as much blue as red is used, plants will be really strong, but short and compact. If growers alter the ratio of blue to red, they can control the structure or morphology of the plants.”
Depending on what a grower is trying to accomplish with the LEDs will determine the ratio of red to blue light.
By altering the ratio of blue to red light, growers can control the plant morphology. A 1:1 ratio of blue to red light will produce strong, compact plants.
“Usually light distributors like Hort Americas will guide growers on what type of light to choose,” he said. “GE creates the fixture based on what the growers and plant researchers are asking for. GE’s expertise is to make good luminaires and conduct the research with universities. Hort Americas staff can properly guide the growers as to what spectrum is best for their crops. These spectrums are based on the many experiments conducted by university researchers and commercial growers.
“Some growers prefer using a broader spectrum (white or pink) to purple light because white light is human-friendly. When choosing lights, it has to be taken into consideration whether there will be humans working in the environment. However, using a broader spectrum impacts the efficacy of generating biomass.”
David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.
Tagged
Artificial Lighting, GE, GE LEDs, Greenhouse LED, LED Grow Lights
Effects Of Temperature On Basil Growth: Some Like It Hot!
Effects Of Temperature On Basil Growth: Some Like It Hot!
Philips researchers all aspects that make up the ideal light recipe for a particular crop. But, did you know that we also study a much broader range of factors to come up with the ideal growth recipe? This means that besides LED growing lights, we look at climate, CO₂, nutrients, and substrates to see how we can make them work together most effectively. In this blog post, I’ll tell you more about the major role that temperature plays in the storage life and yields of basil.
by Thijs van den Bergh
Top performer
Basil, often called the king of herbs, is one of the classic crops that performs very well in a vertical farm. It can be grown year-round in a vertical farm where much higher yields can be achieved compared to a standard greenhouse application. Basil can be grown hydroponically on coco coir, Rockwool or mats.
A global favorite
Originally from India, basil is frequently used in Asian as well as Mediterranean cuisine. Fresh cut basil is highly valued by consumers across the globe and can be grown year-round in a vertical farm or city farm. We have tested several different varieties ranging from Thai and lemon basil to African Blue basil and a range of common Genovese cultivars. They all have very different flavors and characteristics and the breadth in taste and smell is staggering!
The ideal growth recipe for basil
We recently ran a series of experiments to establish a good growth recipe for basil. Philips Horticulture LED Solutions is a lighting supplier and investigating the effects of light on crop growth is one essential aspect of our research. To find a light recipe that achieves a certain set of desired crop characteristics as efficiently as possible, we often start by testing the performance of a crop under different light regimes (spectrum, intensity, day light hours). In this experiment, we broadened our research to also look at other aspects that influence plant growth and we call the combination of these factors a “growth recipe”.
Faster growth or longer shelf life
One of the most influential growth parameters for basil is temperature. Therefore, we grew a series of basil varieties under different temperatures, ranging from 22°C to 30°C. With every increase in temperature, we saw higher productivities (grams per mole). At the same time, however, the shelf life of the end product went down. This means a good growth recipe for basil will need to balance growth speed and shelf life and will greatly depend on how the end product will be sold. For instance, basil for pesto can be grown very quickly because its shelf life is not as important, whereas basil plants grown for fresh cut stems will need to be grown at somewhat more conservative temperature regimes.
Getting the best of both worlds
In the future, we will look at how we can combine faster growth and long shelf life. One approach might be applying a pre-harvest treatment to achieve both faster growth and long shelf life. Our experiments never focus on growth alone.
Thijs van den Bergh is a Plant Specialist at Philips Lighting. He is located at the GrowWise Research Center. His work focuses on setting up and carrying out trials aimed at developing growth recipes to efficiently grow crops with desired characteristics. He carries out research on light, cropping systems, climate and nutrients for a wide range of crops. In this series of articles, Thijs shares the latest results from growing trials carried out in a multi-layer growing environment without any daylight.
For more information:
Philips
www.philips.com/horti
Publication date: 4/30/2018
Illumitex Lights Dream Harvest Farms, An EPA Green Power Partner
Illumitex Lights Dream Harvest Farms, An EPA Green Power Partner
Illumitex Supports Dream Harvest Mission of Sustainable Farming with Efficient Lighting Solutions
AUSTIN, TX (PRWEB) MAY 03, 2018
Illumitex has worked in conjunction with Dream Harvest Farming Company since 2016 to provide LED grow lighting for their certified organic, sustainable, indoor farm located in Houston, TX. The Dream Harvest vertical farming operation uses less than 5% of the water of a normal farm, zero pesticides and 100% wind energy, making it an EPA Green Power Partner. Dream Harvest can also produce 70 times the produce of a normal farm, without taking up arable land.
With a tightly controlled environment, local sourcing, wind power, and efficient LED grow lighting from Illumitex, Dream Harvest is a carbon negative operation that promotes high-quality, locally grown food by the most sustainable means. Dream Harvest is also the first and only certified organic vertical farm in Texas.
“We give our crops exactly what they need, and none of what they don't,” says Zain Shauk, Co-Founder and CEO of Dream Harvest Farming Company. “Part of our success has been the implementation of Illumitex LED lighting. The technology and insight provided by the Illumitex team has been extremely helpful in improving our performance and efficiency, and in generating larger and heartier leafy greens.”
LED lighting provides an indoor operation, such as Dream Harvest, the ability to save significantly on their energy costs. In many cases, this can be close to a 50% savings while offering efficient, quality light to the plants.
“We understand the challenges of sustainable, locally sourced produce which will continue to rise as the urban population continues to increase,” says Jeff Bisberg, CEO of Illumitex. “We know providing the most advance technologies in a cost-effective solution will enable indoor farms to both improve their plant quality and bottom-line.”
Media Contact
Staci Young
512.568.2243
marketing(at)illumitex(dot)com
About Illumitex, Inc:
Founded in 2005 in Austin, Texas, Illumitex works diligently to create industry-shifting achievements in horticultural lighting. Our team of horticulture scientist and engineers have radically transformed LED lighting that influence plant benefits including yield, taste, color and smell. Illumitex is enthusiastically committed to scientific research, cutting-edge design, and innovative engineering. We are dedicated to work with our customer to deliver world class horticulture solutions while pushing lighting into the digital age with automated tools and services. http://www.illumitex.com.
About Dream Harvest Farming Company
Dream Harvest Farming Company, located in the heart of Houston, uses vertical farming to grow fresh, local produce using the most efficient, earth-friendly methods to produce the highest quality leafy greens. http://www.dreamharvestfarms.com
Home, Urban And Vertical Farming Will Play A Central Role In The Future Food Supply of Metropolitan Areas
Home, Urban And Vertical Farming Will Play A Central Role In The Future Food Supply of Metropolitan Areas
New technologies are entering the market and will soon change our habits for good
The conference “Revolution in Food and Biomass Production (REFAB)”, Cologne, 1-2 October, allows a deep look into the future.
Kitchen essential: aromatic fresh herbs for healthy meals available at all times (source: Click & Grow)
Food in our supermarkets has often travelled hundreds of kilometres. What if, nowadays, we have better options for producing healthy, tasty food with lower carbon footprint? Through indoor farming in our kitchens, vertical farming under controlled conditions at industrial scale and outdoor urban gardening methods, healthy food can be produced efficiently and locally.
Urban farming is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in built-up areas and allows to produce food on rooftops, parks, houses, walls, warehouses and other unexpected settings. It is also being integrated into modern architecture and design concepts, with architects and designers combining their expertise to create beautiful environments with integrated food production. Urban agriculture has the advantage that food could go from farm to table in hours rather than days or weeks, cutting transport over long distances to save costs and fuel.
The inFARMING® project from Fraunhofer UMSICHT (Germany) concentrates on utilizing existing rooftops, trying to connect established greenhouse technologies with new concepts and innovative process and material research to meet the specific requirements of the available infrastructure. It integrates production of food in the city by using energy and water flows of the facility, which leads to lower energy usage and savings in carbon dioxide emissions as well as the resource consumption for food production. Internationally, more and more cities integrate such concepts in their city planning.
Phytotron Greenhouse with hanging plants exposed to light (Source: Certhon)
Home farming is an example of urban gardening, which brings food production into your home. Different technologies are already available that fit into kitchen counters or on balconies. For tech fans, mini farms with hydroponics systems up to the size of a fridge are already available on the market. These technologies can be operated via smartphone and allow to control parameters like the light intensity or water and nutrients flow. Micro scale farming at home will develop into a constant food source that covers a part of our nutrient need and even work without using soil.
The Estonian company Click & Grow will present their developed home gardening solutions, which measure the vital requirements of plants automatically. A nano-tech growth medium then releases exactly the right amount of water, oxygen, and nutrients for optimal plant growth.
Another urban agricultural practice is vertical farming where food crops are grown in stacked layers or shelves. These farms are decoupled from the environment and everything from temperature over lighting to watering is engineered to replicate traditional outdoor farming under ideal and controlled conditions. The term “while some try to modify a seed to match the environment, the environment is modified to match a seed” describes vertical farming quite well. Vertical farming promises a more than 300 times higher productivity compared to a commercial farm. This is possible due to a highly automated farm with a season independent operation time of 365 days a year, leading to more crop cycles per year with increased growth rate and higher yield. Further advantages of vertical farming are independence from environmental influences like seasonal changes, droughts, bitter cold, fires, and floods. Due to the closed loop system, pesticides can be avoided and 90 percent less water than at traditional farms is required. Every plant has its own light requirements, which can be met by controlling the light spectrum, intensity and frequency. This allows to increase yields, reduce growing times, and even influence the taste, appearance and nutritional content of plants.
Robot installing purple light (Source: Certhon)
The Dutch company Certhon designs and builds modern turnkey greenhouses and multilayer cultivation systems for the horticulture sector. In terms of daylight free cultivation systems, Certhon integrates all the necessary components for optimal climate management like heating, cooling, lighting, irrigation, CO2and growing tables for every crop. In the last years, Certhon has learned lessons in the development of indoor and vertical farming and will share their experiences at the conference.
The German company OSRAM, as one of the global leaders in lighting technology, is at the forefront of advancements in horticultural lighting providing everything from single LED grow lights to complete solutions. OSRAM can create virtually any light environment with its intelligent light systems to influence factors like the vitamin content of tomatoes and intensity of basil.
Global interest is huge. Countries like India and China are expected to witness the fastest market growth in Asia, but in Berlin alone there are more than 50 indoor vertical farms up and running. Big investors like Wal-Mart, Amazon or GV (formerly Google Ventures) are heavily investing in vertical farming startups and indoor farming technologies.
However, challenges remain: The growth of vertical farming sector is largely affected by operational costs for LED lightning, climate control, labor and space. Further hindrances are high initial investment costs and current limitations on the variety of crops grown. Many of the mentioned forerunners of urban, home and vertical farming, such as Certhon, inFARMING®, OSRAM and Click & Grow, are working on these issues and will present their latest developments and visions at the conference “Revolution in Food and Biomass Production (REFAB)”, 1-2 October in Cologne, Germany. Altogether, 50 speakers and an exhibition will show the future of food and biomass production (www.refab.info). The call for papers is open until mid of May, the preliminary programme can be found online.
Source: nova-Institut GmbH, press release, 2018-04-18.
Deutsche Fassung: http://news.bio-based.eu/heimische-urbane-und-vertikale-landwirtschaft-spielen-eine-zentrale-rolle-bei-der-zukuenftigen-lebensmittelversorgung-von-metropolen/
Supplier
LumiGrow Supplies LED Fixtures to Lettuce Work Foundation Greenhouses
LumiGrow Supplies LED Fixtures to Lettuce Work Foundation Greenhouses
April 20, 2018
By Maury Wright
Editor in Chief, LEDs Magazine
US lettuce grower with a caring social mission has installed LumiGrow SSL enabling full production of leafy greens during cold Ohio winters.
LEDs continue to thrive in horticultural lighting applications as a new lettuce-growing installation attests. LumiGrow has announced that the Lettuce Work Foundation in New Albany, OH has installed Pro 325e fixtures in its lettuce greenhouses that both provide fresh produce to local consumers year-round and aid young adults with autism in entering the workforce. The solid-state lighting (SSL) has enabled better yield during the cold and short days of winter.
Interested in articles & announcements on horticultural lighting?
The Lettuce Work Foundation began commercial growing operations in 2014 with a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) or greenhouse facility. The grower always sought to supply customers, including Kroger and Giant Eagle, with leafy greens for spring salad mixes year-round. But even in the CEA environment, yield suffered in the winter with crop cycles stretching from five weeks to ten, and some weeks transpiring with nothing to harvest.
We will cover CEA, vertical farming, horticultural lighting recipes, and many other topics at our 2018 Horticultural Lighting Conferences. The Horticultural Lighting Conference Europe is slated for May 14–15 in the Netherlands. The Horticultural Lighting Conference US is scheduled for October 9–10 in Portland, OR.
The winter slowdown was doubly troubling for the grower because the business had been created with the goal of providing opportunity to help young adults living with autism. Winter meant less work and fewer opportunities to help the youngsters transition from high school into the workforce. Short days, cloudy skies, and cold, snowy conditions reduced yield and increased mold and mildew in the crop.
Lettuce Work owners Doug and Julie Sharp and greenhouse manager Brent Langenkamp contemplated installation of lighting but found the evaluation of systems and technologies a daunting challenge. But LumiGrow took a proactive role in helping the operation plan an SSL installation, whereas other suppliers had expected the grower to know what they needed and how to install supplemental horticultural lighting.
Indeed, LumiGrow lighting specialist Ashley Veach created a custom plan for Lettuce Work based on the configuration of the operation’s four hydroponic bays. “She helped us figure out how many lights we needed as well as the optimal layout for our custom facility, unlike the other companies that asked us how many units we wanted,” said Doug Sharp.
The results through the first winter of operation with supplemental lighting have exceed the expectations of the Lettuce Work team. “Even though we're only currently using 75% of the space in the greenhouse, we're outperforming last winter,” said Sharp. “This January alone, our revenue was nearly 80% higher than it was that month last year. It's been phenomenal. The color is definitely better, too.”
The Lettuce Work Foundation has installed LumiGrow LED-based horticultural lighting, improving year-round produce yields while providing employment for young adults living with autism.
The results are being felt by the customer as well. Sharp said, “We don’t have to scale back the quantities we deliver in store. We had to ration cases last year. If you skip a store a week or two, you may not get back in there. We haven’t had to deal with that at all. Now, if someone wants extra, we can provide that. It’s really stable. It reduces the risk of us losing a customer because we can provide the same quantities we deliver in the summer.”
Of course, any installation of horticultural lighting comes with both an upfront investment and with the recurring cost of powering the lighting. And with LED-based fixtures, the upfront investment is significantly higher compared to legacy lighting — although the energy efficiency of SSL pays back that upfront premium over time.
Lettuce Work was able to get a state grant to cover part of the purchase of 195 Pro 325e fixtures. Moreover, the Columbus Foundation and Autism Speaks also provided funding to help benefit the student workers.
The choice of LED horticultural lighting proved critical in recurring costs. An electrical contractor had warned the Sharps that electrical costs might reach $1500 per month. But over the initial winter, the bills were typically in the $450 range. And that allowed the greenhouses to be lit for 13-hour growing days.
Of course, there are many methodologies to grow lettuce and other leafy greens indoors. We covered a project from Texas where a grocery store is growing its own greens and herbs just outside the back door using vertical farming in a recycled shipping container. And large-scale vertical farms are filling warehouses with layered crops. The greenhouse approach, however, allows you to turn off the lights in the summer.
Industry experts will deliver more details on horticultural lighting recipe research and system design topics at our upcoming Horticultural Lighting Conferences. To get insight into the content of our conferences, you can peruse the feature articles we published on the presentations at the US conferences in each of the last two years. The 2016 conference featured Robert Colangelo of Green Sense Farms and Cary Mitchell of Purdue University. The 2017 conference featured Steven Newman of Colorado State University and Tessa Pocock of the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications (LESA) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Osram Advances to Become a Leader in Digital Farming Solutions with Acquisition of Texas-Based Fluence Bioengineering
Osram Advances to Become a Leader in Digital Farming Solutions with Acquisition of Texas-Based Fluence Bioengineering
Businesswire
May. 3, 2018
Osram is taking the next step in its quest to become the leading provider of intelligent plant growth solutions by acquiring Fluence Bioengineering, Inc. of Austin, Texas. Fluence was founded in 2013, has approximately 95 employees and its 2017 sales were in the mid-double-digit millions of dollars (USD). The company specializes in LED-based horticultural systems, using OSRAM LED chips, for a wide variety of applications including vertical farming, especially in urban areas. Potential crops range from salad greens and herbs to medicinal plants. Osram and Fluence have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.
"Fluence is opening the floodgates to a huge future market,” said Stefan Kampmann, CTO of OSRAM Licht AG. "Its extensive knowledge of the horticulture market and possible applications, combined with Osram’s expertise in lighting technologies, sensors and connectivity, will position us as a leading horticultural solutions provider.” Associated smart farming software can be integrated into Osram’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform Lightelligence, which brings the digitalization of lighting control to a new level. By combining and analyzing sensor data, Lightelligence enables significant progress in automation and intelligent applications far beyond lighting.
Increasing population and continued urbanization are intensifying the demand for fresh food, especially in densely populated cities around the world. To meet the needs of these areas, growers must tap the potential of greenhouses and vertical cultivation systems, utilizing smart lighting, sensor systems and artificial intelligence. In addition to growing healthy and flavorful food, vertical farms reduce the need for long-distance transportation routes. They also lessen the need for pesticides, fertilizers and excessive water use, and ultimately reduce spoilage. These technologies, which also can be used for growers of medicinal plants, contribute to the goal of sustainable agriculture.
LED-based solutions from Fluence help growers meet their yield and sustainability goals by increasing harvests up to 25 percent, reducing energy costs by as much as 50 percent and, through the targeted use of light, improving the quality and nutritional content of plants. Considering also that approximately 40 percent of food is spoiled between the producer and the supermarket shelf, there is an additional ecological aspect to benefit the smart farming approach.
"In the future, self-learning software algorithms will create and optimize digital plant models in order to cultivate tailor-made salads and herbs for platform partners such as supermarkets, online grocery shops and pharmaceutical companies,” Kampmann said.
Osram has increased its involvement in the horticulture sector over the last several years. The company has developed research and specialty luminaires that enable tailor-made light recipes to be controlled for specific plant types. In 2017, Osram invested in the Munich-based startup Agrilution which develops grow boxes with LED lighting for home use.
Fluence Bioengineering, upon closing, will be positioned within Osram’s Professional and Industrial Applications segment in the Specialty Lighting business unit. "We are excited to be teaming up with Osram to drive forward this global expansion and expand our digital product portfolio. Our new and existing customers will benefit from our partnership with Osram in all matters relating to light and sensors”, said Fluence CEO Nick Klase.
ABOUT OSRAM
OSRAM, based in Munich, is a leading global high-tech company with a history dating back more than 110 years. Primarily focused on semiconductor-based technologies, our products are used in highly diverse applications ranging from virtual reality to autonomous driving and from smartphones to smart and connected lighting solutions in buildings and cities. OSRAM uses the endless possibilities of light to improve the quality of life for individuals and communities. OSRAM’s innovations enable people all over the world not only to see better, but also to communicate, travel, work and live better. OSRAM has approximately 26,400 employees worldwide as of end of fiscal 2017 (September 30) and generated revenue of more than €4.1 billion. The company is listed on the stock exchanges in Frankfurt and Munich (ISIN: DE000LED4000; WKN: LED 400; trading symbol: OSR). Further information can be found at www.osram.com.
ABOUT FLUENCE
Fluence specializes in LED-based horticultural systems for a wide variety of applications including vertical farming. Its customers are agricultural producers in indoor locations such as high-rise buildings. Potential applications range from salad vegetables and herbs to medicinal plants. For more information go to https://fluence.science/.
Disclaimer
This document contains forward-looking statements and information, i.e. statements about events that lie in the future rather than the past. These forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as 'expect', 'want', 'anticipate', 'intend', 'plan', 'believe', 'seek', 'estimate', 'will', and 'predict'. Such statements are based on current expectations and certain assumptions made by OSRAM's management, so they are subject to various risks and uncertainties. A wide range of factors, many of which are beyond OSRAM's control, have an influence on the business activities, success, business strategy, and results of OSRAM. These factors may cause the actual results, success, and performance of OSRAM to differ significantly from those expressly or implicitly communicated in the forward-looking statements or from those that are expected on the basis of past trends. In particular, these factors include, but are not limited to, the circumstances described in the report on risks and opportunities contained in the annual report of the OSRAM Licht Group. If one or more of these risks or uncertainties materializes, or should the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, the actual results, performance, and success of OSRAM may differ significantly from those described in forward-looking statements as being expected, anticipated, intended, planned, believed, sought, estimated, or projected. OSRAM assumes no obligation, nor does it intend, to update these forward-looking statements above and beyond the legal requirements or to adjust them in light of unexpected developments. Due to rounding, numbers presented in this and other reports may not add up precisely to the totals provided and percentages may not precisely reflect the absolute figures to which they relate.
Thrive Agritech, Leading LED Horticulture Lighting Innovator, Secures $2 Million Capital Injection
Latest Investment Round, led by New York-based Rose Capital, to Accelerate Adoption of Thrive’s Unique Lighting Technology into Global Horticulture Market
NEW YORK (PRWEB) April 30, 2018
Thrive Agritech, Inc., a technology company focused on leading innovations in LED horticulture lighting (“Thrive”), today announced that it has received an additional $2 million in equity capital to accelerate the development and deployment of its LED technology in controlled environment agriculture. The investment round was led by Rose Capital, a New York-based institutional investor. In conjunction with the investment round, Rose Capital has also joined Thrive’s Board of Directors.
The financing round – and a new partnership with Rose Capital – follows an exceptional year for Thrive Agritech, which saw a rapidly expanding customer base with lighting installations in greenhouses, vertical farms and cannabis production facilities across North America.
Rose Capital noted, “We are excited about this investment based on the extraordinary customer adoption that Thrive has experienced since its first product launch in 2015. Thrive has established a successful track record of commercializing best-in-class LED lighting products – having launched a new product every year since the Company’s inception. We look forward to partnering with Thrive to continue to break down traditional industry barriers and commercialize some of the most innovative products in the global horticultural market.”
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that food production must increase by 70% over the next forty years to satisfy increasing demand. The total market in North America for LED lighting solutions for greenhouses is expected to grow from 2.5 million square feet in 2015 to more than 50 million square feet in 2021. In response to these trends, companies like Thrive are introducing high output lighting solutions to change the efficiency dynamic for global growers.
“Our biggest challenge today is responding to the overwhelming number of opportunities with which we are being confronted,” said Thrive Agritech CEO Brian Bennett. “As we close this investment round, we will be aggressively hiring sales, marketing, and operations support, and leveraging Rose Capital’s expertise, to exceed the expectations of our customers and further develop our product portfolio and core technologies. Additionally, we will be expanding operations into Europe to capture growth in the emerging greenhouse supplemental lighting market.”
Thrive Agritech was founded at the Y Combinator accelerator in Silicon Valley, with a mission to enhance sustainability for controlled environment agriculture. The company’s industry leading energy efficient lighting products have already made significant reductions in the carbon footprint from older lighting technologies. Further, all Thrive Agritech products have an optimized horticulture light spectrum, high reliability, and most importantly improve efficiency and longevity of horticultural crop growth.
About Thrive Agritech
Thrive Agritech is a leading developer and manufacturer of innovative products for the controlled environment agriculture industry. The company’s patent-pending technologies enable unique advantages for horticultural solid-state lighting and controls. Corporate headquarters are located in New York City. For more information, visit http://www.thriveagritech.com
About Rose Capital
Rose Capital is a strategic advisor and investment firm focused on the global medical and adult use legal cannabis sector. It is funded by a small consortium of partners looking to access the industry through a diversified long-term, value-focused cannabis fund. Rose Capital manages an ecosystem of best-in-class operating assets across the data, analytics & compliance, distribution & logistics, and consumer products & contract manufacturing verticals of the US cannabis market, expanding globally. Please visit us at http://www.boldrosecapital.com.
The Role of LEDs in Speed Breeding
The Role of LEDs in Speed Breeding
Some of the most important crops for feeding the ever-increasing global population include wheat and barley. In order to meet the future demand, scientists have a task of finding ways to improve efficiencies in breeding these and other, similar plant species. Typically, more than 10 years are needed to develop novel cultivars with an advanced agronomic performance. On one hand, it is because several generation cycles are required to obtain genetically stable lines from selected parent material and on the other hand it is because we are limited in how many generation cycles we can carry out annually.
John Innes Centre scientists have found a way to reduce the amount of time needed for new cultivar development. They call it speed breeding and with it the time needed for one generation cycle is cut in half. They ran tests on wheat (Triticum aestivum), durum wheat (Triticum durum), barley (Hordeum vulgare), chickpea (Cicer arietinum), pea (Pisum sativum) and canola (Brassica napus). The findings show that it is possible to have up to 6 generations annually for the first five species listed and up to 4 for canola, as opposed to the 2-3 generations annually under normal greenhouse conditions.
To achieve this, they used a controlled environment set-up with a light/dark period of 22/2 hours as opposed to the plants grown in greenhouses with no supplementary light. The plants subjected to the speed breeding conditions progressed to the flowering stage in approximately half the time of those in the greenhouse conditions. The 22-hour daily photoperiod was achieved by using LED illumination as a supplementary source of light. The spectrum in question is Valoya’s NS1, a patented wide spectrum that is a close replica of the wavelengths produced by the Sun on a clear sky day. Additionally, a Far-Red spectrum was used in combination with the NS1 so as to induce flowering. This is because a low R: FR (red: far red) ratio has been found to reduce the time to flowering in plant species such as wheat, barley, grain legumes and many others.
This approach will enable seed companies to significantly cut costs and to produce results faster. Implications could thus be significant for the global food production. It is important to note that the effect on seed quality and quantity was similar to the slower/conventional breeding cycles. Furthermore, it was possible to show that the phenotype for traits such as loss of awn suppressor, dwarf genes, reduced glaucousness or progression of fusarium could be recapitulated under the speed breeding conditions.
Learn more about speed breeding here.
The full study is available here.
The official press release of the John Innes Centre is available here.
Valoya will be hosting the LEDs & Innovators Conference 2018 at the upcoming GreenTech in Amsterdam. The conference is free-of-charge and the topic of Speed Breeding will be presented by Valoya’s biologist, Ms.Stefanie Linzer. To learn more and to reserve your seat, please click here.
About Valoya Oy
Valoya is a provider of high end, energy efficient LED grow lights for use in crop science, vertical farming, and medicinal plants cultivation. Valoya LED grow lights have been developed using Valoya's proprietary LED technology and extensive plant photobiology research. Valoya's customer base includes numerous vertical farms, greenhouses and research institutions all over the world (including 8 out of 10 world’s largest agricultural companies).
Additional information:
Valoya Oy, Finland
Tel: +358 10 2350300
Email: sales@valoya.com
Web: www.valoya.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valoyafi/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/valoya
Philips Lighting Unveils New Philips GreenPower LED Toplighting Light Recipe For European Market at Rose Event
Philips Lighting Unveils New Philips GreenPower LED Toplighting Light Recipe For European Market at Rose EventThe new GreenPower LED toplighting with cut rose spectrum allows growers to increase light levels year-round without increasing heat.
April 13, 2018
Philips Lighting Unveils New Philips GreenPower LED Toplighting Light Recipe For European Market at Rose Event
New GreenPower LED toplighting with an optimized light spectrum for cut rose cultivation
- Resulting in higher quality roses; bigger buds and heavier stems
Eindhoven, Netherlands – Philips Lighting Unveils New Philips GreenPower LED Toplighting Light Recipe For European Market at Rose Event. The new GreenPower LED toplighting with cut rose spectrum allows growers to increase light levels year-round without increasing heat. During extensive trials undertaken by research institutes Delphy and Wageningen University, and monitored by experienced rose growers, the new lighting with cut rose spectrum improves the quality of the roses and is 40% more energy efficient compared to high-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting.
“Since we first introduced LED toplighting in 2015, we have been working intensively with a group of about 30 rose growing companies, consultants, universities, research institutes and representatives from the Dutch government, active in developing the rose sector, to further refine our light recipes for rose cultivation,” said Udo van Slooten, Business Leader Horticulture at Philips Lighting. “The feedback from this network helped us improve the quality and quantity of roses grown under LED lighting.”
The LED challenge for rose cultivation
“A selection of rose growers use GreenPower LED toplighting for cultivation of cut roses, with LED they can reach higher light levels for their crop,” Van Slooten explained. “This resulted in higher yields but did not produce the quality improvements that cut rose growers had hoped for with LED. During the year, cut roses require up to 20 hours of lighting per day on average, making it extremely important to find a light spectrum which improves both quality and yield.”
“The rose branches under the new spectrum are longer, heavier and have bigger buds,” Marc Koene, owner of SK Roses in the Netherlands added.
New GreenPower LED toplighting with rose light recipe
The new LED rose light recipe allows growers to increase the number of lighting hours, making it a highly efficient way for them to increase production and produce high quality crops due to the stabilized climate. The new LED rose light recipe is available with the newest generation of Philips GreenPower LED toplighting. These specific products offer light output levels that typically deliver 500 or 600µmol/s per module at a very high efficacy of up to 3.0 µmol/J. In the Philips GreenPower toplighting with rose spectrum, a small amount of white LEDs have been added to assist people working in the greenhouse to perform labor tasks like harvest and scouting. The module is designed to dissipate heat efficiently and guarantees a lifetime up to 35,000 hours.
For further information, please contact:
Philips Lighting Horticulture LED Solutions
Daniela Damoiseaux, Global Marcom Manager Horticulture at Philips Lighting
Tel: +31 6 31 65 29 69
E-mail: daniela.damoiseaux@philips.com
www.philips.com/horti
About Philips Lighting
Philips Lighting (Euronext: LIGHT), the world leader in lighting products, systems, and services, delivers innovations that unlock business value, providing rich user experiences that help improve lives. Serving professional and consumer markets, we lead the industry in leveraging the Internet of Things to transform homes, buildings and urban spaces. With 2017 sales of EUR 7.0 billion, we have approximately 32,000 employees in over 70 countries. News from Philips Lighting is located at the Newsroom, Twitter and LinkedIn. Information for investors can be found on the Investor Relations page.
How GLASE Is Promoting The Development And Adoption of Energy-Efficient Lighting And Control Technologies In The CEA Industry
The Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium is a public-private partnership to integrate advanced energy-efficient LED lighting with improved environmental controls for more efficient and sustainable greenhouse production.
How GLASE Is Promoting The Development And Adoption of Energy-Efficient Lighting And Control Technologies In The CEA Industry
The Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium is a public-private partnership to integrate advanced energy-efficient LED lighting with improved environmental controls for more efficient and sustainable greenhouse production. The consortium is led by Cornell University’s Controlled Environment Agriculture group and the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications (LESA) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and is supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
GLASE principal investigator Neil Mattson explains lighting trial to some of the attendees at the Cornell CEA Advisory Board Meeting November 3.
GLASE research integrates advances in LED light engineering, plant photobiology, carbon dioxide enrichment and systems control to dramatically reduce the energy cost and carbon footprint of horticultural lighting. GLASE is creating intelligent systems that can be easily tailored to the needs of specific greenhouse crops, providing unparalleled flexibility for the grower. This new consortium will include lighting manufacturers, growers, trade groups, produce buyers, agriculture lighting engineers, researchers, and government agencies, as well as researchers at Cornell, Rensselaer and other academic partners.
GLASE builds on prior lighting and agricultural energy control systems work sponsored by NYSERDA. To ensure new energy-efficient technologies are adopted within the greenhouse industry, GLASE will make its advanced systems capabilities broadly accessible through extensive educational outreach and training opportunities.
What Is The Importance of LED Lighting To Indoor Growing?
What Is The Importance of LED Lighting To Indoor Growing?
In most indoor growing operations, lighting contributes about half of all equipment costs. Over the past five years, LED lighting pricing has fallen significantly, even as lights have continued to increase in efficiency. LEDs are expected to become even more efficient. They are also expected to have further developments contributed by research on different lighting wavelengths and lighting combinations–for example, combining the use of a specific wavelength of light with a second stressor to induce desirable characteristics in a plant.
Efficiency
The average LED lighting efficiency, which is measured by the light output per unit of energy consumed (note: this isn’t the best way to measure plant output when calculating your farm economics), has nearly doubled since 2010, from under 50 lumens per watt to nearly 100 lumens per watt in 2017. This trend is predicted to continue and 200 lumens per watt is forecast by 2030[1]. These efficiency gains will occur as prices fall. The efficiency of LED lighting also has benefits as they generate much less heat than alternatives. For example, in some cases, 50% of energy for LEDs are converted into light while HPS lights typically convert only 30%.[2]This allows lights to be placed closer to plants, so rows both linearly and vertically can be placed closer together. This can also lead to less of a load on your HVAC system.
Lower Variable Costs
Greater efficiency also means less variable cost. As electricity costs make up around a quarter of total production cost,[3] LEDs can have a major impact on long-run average cost. Goldman Sachs estimated that compared to fluorescent lights, LEDs cut electricity consumption by over 40% in 2015 and this is expected to rise to 50% in 2020.[4]
Fixed Costs Expected to Fall
In the past five years, LED light prices have fallen 85%. General LED light prices are forecast to fall by a further 70% through 2020.[5] At this rate, the fixed cost, which has been one of the largest barriers to entry of adopting LED lighting, will become much less of a challenge in the coming years.
Flexibility
LEDs offer flexibility for farmers in a few different ways. From a mechanical standpoint, they do not usually need a separate ballast and can be plugged directly into a standard electrical socket. They turn on instantly, without warmup time, and are brighter than alternate lights of the same wattage. Their efficiency and low heat output makes them a great option for small spaces.
From a research standpoint, they allow plant scientists to experiment to find ways to improve crop yield and quality. They can allow the scientist to mix light spectrums and intensity to their specifications with wider environmental controls of the grow room. This can include plant size and speed of growth, the light’s impact on the color of the plant and even flavor and nutrition.
Want to know more?
Want to know more? Don’t miss the 6th Annual Indoor Ag Con on May 2nd and 3rd at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Make sure to catch the session “What Are the Alternatives to LED Lighting for Indoor Farms?” with special guest Jack Griffin, CEO of Metropolis Farms. Also on the subject, catch “How Does LED Lighting Improve Beyond Hardware?” with Josh Gerovac, Horticulture Scientist with Fluence Bioengineering and Xander Yang, Product Line Manager with Sanan Bio. You can find the complete speaking agenda here. Want to attend? You can register here. Want to join our amazing variety of exhibitors? You can register to exhibit here.
References
[1] “LED bulb efficiency expected to continue improving as cost declines”, US Energy Information Administration March 19, 2014
[2] Figures from a presentation by Kurt Parbst of Envirotech Cultivation Solutions at 5th Annual Ag-Con in May 2017
[3] “Plant Factory: An Indoor Vertical Farming System for Efficient Quality Food Production” Edited by: Toyoki Kozai, Genhua Niu and
Michiko Takagaki, Academic Press, October 2015
[4] “The Low Carbon Economy” Goldman Sachs, November 30, 2015
[5] Source of figures is a presentation by Jason Green of Edenworks at 4th annual Indoor Ag-Con on April 6, 2016
JOIN US AT THE 6TH ANNUAL INDOOR AG-CON ON MAY 2-3, 2018
REGISTER TODAY
Syracuse Startup Developing LED Lights For Indoor Farming
Syracuse Startup Developing LED Lights For Indoor Farming
Mar 28, 2018
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) - Getting your hands on fresh, local produce, even in dreary winter months could be a lot easier thanks to a young Syracuse company.
Heliohex says it has developed LED lights that can really improve indoor farming.
The company is operating out of The Tech Garden in Syracuse.
Heliohex Founder and Ceo Adam Milam say, "So throughout the life cycle of the plant you can do the sunrise and the sunset because our sun is not just stationary, its not just one color, there are dynamic changes and we can do that."
Milam says his company's lights specialize in LED lights that best meet the needs of various produce, which have very specific demands.
"Plants really need the right intensity of light, they need the right coloration and uniformity of the light is critical and that's where we stand out," Milam tells NewsChannel 9.
Kale Harbick is a Research Associate at Cornell University, "You have lights in a greenhouse or warehouse farm, they're all in the same plain and you get a bullseye effect so plants in the middle get lots of light, plants on the edge don't get as much light."
Cornell researchers say Heliohex may have the answer to this problem.
It is why the Ivy League school has teamed up with Heliohex to see if together they can enhance the lights beyond what they're already showing they can do.
"We learned more and more about Adam's technology and think it has some interesting benefits we're not seeing in other places," Harbick says.
Milam adds, "We want to validate that we're doing the right things to solve the problems of farmers."
Heliohex is selling to select customers right now while it's also expanding its team and bringing on new hires, and taking on investors at the same time.
Copyright 2018 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
LumiGrow Honored with Sapphire Award for Using Light to Change the Agricultural Model
LumiGrow Honored with Sapphire Award for Using Light to Change the Agricultural Model
Emeryville, CA, March 13, 2018
On February 14, 2018, the Sapphire Awards Gala Dinner celebrated the most innovative companies in the solid-state lighting (SSL) industry by naming the fourth annual LED Magazine Sapphire Award winners. The event, held in Long Beach, CA aboard the RMS Queen Mary, recognized the most innovative LED-centric technologies across the lighting industry. LumiGrow was delighted to receive a Sapphire Award for Best Horticultural Lighting Solution of the year.
“With LEDs, the story was long about energy efficiency, but when history is written it will be about photometrics and form factor. LEDs enable all new experiences in light,” said Maury Wright, Editor-in-Chief of LEDs Magazine. “Our Sapphire Awards winners exemplify that eventuality with innovation that is simply amazing relative to products from one year ago.”
The LumiGrow Smart Lighting Solution led the pack for data-centric innovations fundamentally changing the industry. The smart horticultural lighting solution begins with LED fixtures that are dynamically adjustable for light intensity, spectrum, and photoperiod. The fixtures are then integrated with Wi-Fi modules used to control the fixtures by zone from any smartphone, tablet, or computer. This level of dynamic control is used to deploy advanced horticultural lighting strategies built to improve crop quality, achieve higher crop yields (in some cases up to 40% without any additional energy-usage required), and elicit desired crop characteristics by customizing plant morphology, color, flavor, and nutrition.
The next level of the solution comes when plugging LumiGrow Light Sensor Modules into the fixtures. The light sensors analyze sunlight within the greenhouse and report data back to the Wireless Control System. The LumiGrow system will then learn cloud-cover and lighting patterns to adjust the LumiGrow fixtures and automatically deliver ideal lighting conditions year-round. Growers can then access the LumiGrow software interface to gain better understanding of their lighting performance. seasonal sunlight conditions, and power-usage by monitoring daily and historical lighting charts to track both sunlight and supplemental LED light levels at the crop.
"The agricultural industry is now seeing the value that advanced data-centric technologies can have when meeting rapidly increasing demands for a growing world population. For the last ten years we’ve been deploying smart horticultural lighting solutions, advancing a new field of science to create value where it wasn’t possible before. We already have over 8,000 smart fixtures in the cloud. Now we’re just making our solution as automated and easy-to-use as possible to support growers worldwide.” says LumiGrow CEO, Shami Patel.
A panel of 27 independent judges chose the LumiGrow Smart Horticultural Lighting Solution from a group of numerous finalists, which included the category's 2017 incumbent. The judges are chosen from industry and consultancy roles to ensure that each entry is fairly evaluated by multiple experts. All judges were carefully screened to verify that there were no possible conflicts of interest in the process and ensure that the best and most innovative solutions were recognized.
About LumiGrow Inc.
LumiGrow, Inc., the leader in smart horticultural lighting, empowers growers and scientists with the ability to improve plant growth, boost crop yields, and achieve cost-saving operational efficiencies. LumiGrow offers a range of proven grow light solutions for use in greenhouses, controlled environment agriculture and research chambers. LumiGrow solutions are eligible for energy-efficiency subsidies from utilities across North America.
LumiGrow has the largest horticultural LED install-base in the United States, with installations in over 30 countries. Our customers range from top global agribusinesses, many of the world’s top 100 produce and flower growers, enterprise cannabis cultivators, leading universities, and the USDA. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, LumiGrow is privately owned and operated.
For more information, call (800) 514-0487 or visit www.lumigrow.com
AEssenseGrows Introduces Cost Calculator For Managing Lighting Expenses For Indoor Farming
AEssenseGrows Introduces Cost Calculator For Managing Lighting Expenses For Indoor Farming
Tool Shows Choosing the Right Lights Can Save Millions in Energy Costs Over Time
NEWS PROVIDED BY AEssenseGrows, Inc.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- AEssenseGrows, an ag-tech company specializing in automated aeroponic platforms for high-yield plant production, today introduced a cost calculator to help customers manage electricity expense and increase profitability.
AEssenseGrows' new cost calculator estimates upfront and recurring expenses of lighting for indoor farming.
"AEssenseGrows is all about removing the guesswork and surprises from indoor farming, from the cost of investment through the quality and size of yields," said Phil Gibson, vice president of Marketing at AEssenseGrows. "Our new cost calculator will help our customers get a solid estimate on one of their key upfront and recurring expenses—lighting—so they can be better informed to optimize their business."
With the cost calculator, customers can enter such variables as the number of grow lights, cost of electricity, number of daylight hours, cost of maintenance and labor, and cooling efficiency. The projected cost trade-offs based on different lighting technologies—investment and annual operating expense--will appear immediately.
The calculator analyzes the costs of owning and operating traditional HPS lights and the company's premium LED lights. The calculator finds, for instance, that at 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, a 1,000-light grow using the LEDs would save growers $1.19 million over 5 years compared to using HPS lights, with the breakeven point at 21 months. For growers paying 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, those same 1,000-light grow with LEDs would save $2.26 million over five years compared to HPS lights, with the breakeven point at just 13 months.
The cost calculator works in concert with lighting products for the company's AEtrium Systems, which is a platform to produce high-quality crops while reducing the requisite amount of water, nutrients, and labor of traditional farming. These modular aeroponic grow systems help customers achieve up to 40 percent higher year-round yields and faster profitability (benchmark case study available here).
The AEtrium System lets users easily monitor grow conditions through a blanket of precision sensors controlled by the Guardian™ Grow Manager software. Optimal delivery of nutrients to indoor plants is guaranteed with confidence from recipe creation through irrigation execution, with the constant attention to detail that automation provides. Every sensor reading is processed and mirrored to the AWS cloud, providing a perfect data record for any grow cycle and any plant variety.
AEssenseGrows will demonstrate its advanced aeroponics systems at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit March 20-21 in San Francisco, Calif. AEssenseGrows offers free webinars on key issues concerning indoor farming. The next webinar, "Vegetative Plant Production: Bulking Up Your Plants," will be 10 a.m. Pacific March 14, and reservations can be made here.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-startup was recently selected by Ackrell Capital as one of the firm's Top 100 Private Cannabis Companies for 2018.
AEssense, Inc. (pronounced "essence"), founded in 2015, is a precision ag-tech company based in Sunnyvale, CA. AEssenseGrows provides plant growth SmartFarm platforms and software automation to support year-round, enriched growth to fresh produce and medicinal plant producers globally. With AEssenseGrows, you can precisely control your production operations at your fingertips from anywhere in the world.
For more information for AEssense, please contact Phil Gibson, or visit AEssenseGrows.com.
Phil Gibson
AEssenseGrows, Inc.
669.261.3086
pgibson@aessensegrows.com
SOURCE AEssenseGrows, Inc.
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Grow Lights For Indoor Plants and Indoor Gardening: An Overview
Grow Lights For Indoor Plants and Indoor Gardening: An Overview
By Brian Barth on March 2, 2018
Large, LED arrays like this aren't your only options when it comes to grow lights for indoor gardening and plants.
By nikkytok / Shutterstock.com
Indoor growing offers many advantages. The biggest benefits are the most obvious: garden pests can’t get at your plants, and you have total control over the weather.
Yet unless you’re lucky enough to have a solarium or greenhouse attached to your home, providing sufficient light to your plants will likely be an obstacle (shade-tolerant houseplants excepted). South-facing windows may provide enough light for a tray or two of seedlings, but if you want to grow vegetables, or any other sun-loving plants, to maturity, you’re going to need grow lights.
The indoor lighting found in most homes does little to support photosynthesis. Traditional incandescent bulbs do not have the proper spectrum of light, or intensity, to supplant the sun. Household fluorescent bulbs can make effective grow lights, but only if they are placed in within a few inches of the foliage and left on for 16 hours per day—not ideal.
Warm vs Cool: Understanding Color Spectrum in Grow Lights
When shopping for grow lights, you’ll notice they are labeled with numbers like 2700K or 4000K. This refers to their relative warmth or coolness on the color spectrum—the higher the number, the cooler the light. Foliage growth is generally best around 6500K, though many plants need a period of warmer light, around 3000K, in order to produce flowers, and thus fruit.
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In other words, if your goal is to simply produce seedlings, leafy green vegetables, or root crops, you only need higher spectrum bulbs. If you want to grow flowers, marijuana, or any fruiting plant (cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, lemons, etc.), you’ll also require low spectrum bulbs. You can some types of bulbs are available in full-spectrum form, however, simplifying things.
Types of Grow Lights
There are three main types of grow lights.
Full-spectrum fluorescent lights—either of the tube or standard CFL variety—are a great choice when starting seeds indoors. PHOTO: By Falcona / Shutterstock.com
Fluorescent Grow Lights
The standard fluorescent bulb, commonly denoted T12, makes a decent grow light for houseplants, starting seeds, supplementing the natural light of a window, and other situations where lighting needs are modest. They are fairly weak in light intensity, however, and must be placed within a few inches of the foliage to have much of an effect.
T5 fluorescent bulbs, which are narrower in diameter than T12s (but still widely available wherever lightbulbs are sold), have a much higher light intensity, making them suitable as a sole light source for sun-loving plants. Compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) are an option for small spaces, or if you don’t like the look of long rectangular fluorescent light fixtures—CFLs will screw into an ordinary incandescent light fixture.
Look for specialized full-spectrum fluorescent grow bulbs (like this T5 option, or this CFL option, which fits into a standard socket) to provide the right balance of light for flowering plants.
LED Grow Lights
While they are considerably more expensive than fluorescent bulbs, LEDs use half the electricity and last five times longer, more than paying for themselves in the long run. The average LED bulb from the hardware store is not designed for plant growth, however—you need special LED grow bulbs, a relatively new technology that is increasingly available from horticultural suppliers.
LED grow bulbs are capable of much greater light intensity than fluorescent bulbs and are available in full-spectrum form. An easy rule of thumb: Fluorescent bulbs are often used when growing just a handful of plants; LEDs are preferable for larger quantities since you can achieve higher light intensity per square foot. Another advantage of LEDs? They produce very little heat compared to other bulbs—an issue that can become problematic when you have a lot of lights in a small space.
HID Grow Lights
Before the advent of LED grow lights, HID (high-intensity discharge) lights were the main option for large indoor plantings. They are extremely powerful, but are expensive to purchase, consume electricity inefficiently, require special light fixtures, and give off a lot of heat. All that said, they are very effective and are still widely used. If you want to grow large plants like tomatoes or lemon bushes, HIDs are good bet because the light penetrates farther into the foliage than with other bulbs.
There are two types of HID bulbs. High-pressure sodium (HPS) bulbs are best for flowering (low spectrum), while MH (metal halide) bulbs are required to support vegetative growth (high spectrum); the two types are often used in conjunction. Unfortunately, each type requires its own fixture.
How to Install Grow Lights
Installation requirements vary drastically depending on the scope of your indoor garden and the type of bulb used. But here are a few basic steps to get you started.
Figure out how many bulbs you need.
Most edible plants require at least 30 watts per square foot, but fruiting species (like tomatoes) generally won’t produce abundant high-quality crops without 40 to 50 watts per square foot. Wattage is always indicated on the bulb package. Simply multiply the square footage of your growing area by the number of watts you plan to provide (between 30 and 50); then divide by the number of watts supplied by the bulbs you plan to use.
Devise a light rack.
You’ll need a way to support the bulbs over the plants at the proper height. And unless you’re growing something that will remain at more or less the same height throughout its lifespan, you’ll also need a way to raise the light rack as the plants grow. This is usually accomplished through some sort of pulley system or by hanging the light fixtures with metal chain—that way you can easily adjust the height by changing the link the light fixture is home from. Grow light racks are also available for purchase online.
Add the necessary accoutrements.
It is generally wise to plug your lights into a timer to ensure they get the proper amount of light, and that they get it at the same time each day. Fancy ones are available for indoor growing, though a standard lamp timer also works. If your lights bring the temperature above 80 degrees or so in your growing area, install a ventilation system to prevent heat stress. Aficionados make use of reflectors and all sorts of other grow light accessories to achieve optimum results.
How Long Should I Leave Grow Lights On?
Plants grown indoors require more hours of light than those grown outdoors. 14 to 18 hours of light per day is recommended for most edible species when grown under artificial lighting. Don’t be tempted to leave the lights on 24-7, however—at least six hours of darkness each day is essential to plant health.
As the plants grow, raise the light fixture accordingly to maintain the optimal distance, which varies depending on the type of bulb used and its wattage (the higher the wattage, the farther away the bulb can be). Here are the basic parameters:
Fluorescent Grow Light: 3 to 12 inches
LED Grow Light :12 to 24 inches
HID Grow Light: 24 to 60 inches
Happy planting!
The Farm of The Future Is Magenta
The Farm of The Future Is Magenta
What color do many green plants like? The opposite of green: magenta. Nanoco
After the US, guess what country is the second largest exporter of food by dollar value? The Netherlands. One of the smallest countries in the world has become one of the biggest exporters of food.
Dutch farmers have become masters of indoor farming, as National Geographic reports. With advanced greenhouses using LED lights, hydroponics and more, they're able to grow more food, faster and in a smaller space. It's a growing trend (pun intended).
Lighting is one of the biggest costs of indoor farming, but some wavelengths (colors) of visible light are more useful than others. Magenta, for example, is a favorite of green plants. Quantum dots are can be tuned to produce magenta light efficiently.
By using wavelengths the plants want most, less overall light and power needs to be used. No power is wasted creating green wavelengths that a specific plant species doesn't need, for example.
Lights augmented by quantum dots can promote faster growth, not just on a per-plant basis, but even depending on where that plant is in its growing cycle. Certain wavelengths can be used for a young plant, and slightly different wavelengths for a more mature plant.
Researchers have also been able to grow plants faster. Nanoco, makers of the lights you see in the image at the right and above, claim that in some cases plants can grow twice as fast as with standard LED lights.
Quantum dots could be the key to indoor farms producing significantly more food, or small farms being able to produce vastly more food. Indoor farms can also exist in places not typically conducive to farming, such as the cities where most of the world now lives.
And if you look even further ahead, this would be a pretty fantastic way for us to grow a lot of food quickly in space, on the Moon or Mars, and beyond.