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Energy in greenhouse horticulture

Project

Indoor Farming

Growing crops under fully controlled conditions

Worldwide, there are more and more initiatives toward growing plants without the use of daylight.

The advantage of this is that there is good control over the (micro) climate in which the plant grows. Both temperature, relative humidity, CO2 concentration in the air and the properties of the light used can be controlled very precisely. In addition, watering is also well controlled here.

The advantage of this, compared to the more classic greenhouses, is that weather conditions have no influence on this. The disadvantage of this then is the higher energy consumption and high investment costs.

To investigate this, "small" research units (we call them the Greenboxes) were built by the Energy Expertise Center to conduct initial tests. Here we focused on the construction of the growth chamber and the control technology to obtain an optimal climate.

Two larger climate chambers were also built to test the feasibility of the initial trials on a larger scale. You can see our research infrastructure in the video below.

Researchers

Researcher

Jeroen van Roy

Expertise in techniques for indoor farming, data analytics and smart lighting greenhouse horticulture