Getting it within ten miles of city limits is still a vast improvement over shipping it hundreds or thousands of miles as we do today. Doesn't have to be downtown in prime real estate, just within...
Getting it within ten miles of city limits is still a vast improvement over shipping it hundreds or thousands of miles as we do today. Doesn't have to be downtown in prime real estate, just within an hour's drive of downtown. Ideally, every large building would have a floor or two dedicated to farming, but we're a long way off from that sort of thinking.
Right now we're in the 'convert old buildings to farms' phase, because that's the cheap way to get started. Eventually these companies will make enough money to start the next phase, which is building a skyscraper from scratch just for farming. That's when it can really take off, it needs to be designed that way to really take advantage of the farming tech and control all emissions/generate power. In eight years we went from zero vertical farms to several hundred worldwide, this trend is just getting started.
Just wondering, have you got a source on vertical farms generating more power than they use? I skimmed the article and searched for power, electricity, and generation and I couldn't find anything....
Just wondering, have you got a source on vertical farms generating more power than they use? I skimmed the article and searched for power, electricity, and generation and I couldn't find anything. I'm just confused as to how that can possibly work. Worth noting though, that vertical farming would be a great use for cheap, non-backed-up solar power.
Cover the rooftop with solar arrays, set up biogas capture systems to grab all of the emissions, and do composting on site for waste greens. Then you can potentially generate a power profit. As...
Cover the rooftop with solar arrays, set up biogas capture systems to grab all of the emissions, and do composting on site for waste greens. Then you can potentially generate a power profit. As far as I know, there aren't any farms that have done this and are providing a net power benefit yet. I doubt that will ever be possible unless the farm is designed and built for it from the start. Converted farms living in old industrial buildings will likely never provide a net power benefit. Here's an example.
Still doesn't really make sense to me. Even if you're capturing 100% of the energy from the sun (in reality solar panels are only like 20% efficient. You're then turning that energy back into...
Still doesn't really make sense to me. Even if you're capturing 100% of the energy from the sun (in reality solar panels are only like 20% efficient. You're then turning that energy back into light which also isn't an efficient process. The plants are then turning that radiation into energy bearing chemicals (sugars and carbohydrates) which are being shipped out. Where is this excess power coming from?
These systems don't require much power to operate - heating the buildings is the largest expense, the LED lighting systems provide a massive energy reduction over fluorescent and sodium. The...
These systems don't require much power to operate - heating the buildings is the largest expense, the LED lighting systems provide a massive energy reduction over fluorescent and sodium. The changes in lighting costs are the only reason this has become practical enough to start happening. The solar panels and biogas are enough to power the facility provided it's not being run in a year-round cold climate. The profit is expected to come from selling excess biogas.
How is that possible though? If you've got say, 200 sq foot of roof to work with, that's like 3kw of power. Now each floor is going to require pretty close to that for the plants to grow, since...
How is that possible though? If you've got say, 200 sq foot of roof to work with, that's like 3kw of power. Now each floor is going to require pretty close to that for the plants to grow, since that's already less than what they'd get from the sun since solar panels are only operating at around 20% efficiency. I guess because you're cutting out infrared and UV, and maybe even green light you can gain some efficiency there, but LEDs are still only like 50% efficient. At the end of the line you're putting out 10% of the energy you've collected in the form of solar radiation that's hitting the roof. So maybe you could have a single grow floor and still be energy neutral if you're only spitting out the wavelengths that plants like.
I fail to see how you could power multiple floors this way though, and especially if you're saying you come out energy positive. Maybe if you're burning all of the biogas the plants produce, but 1, that means you're not actually exporting crops, and 2, you're no longer carbon neutral, and what's the point of doing the whole thing? All of that is only speaking of the light. If you're in an area where the temperatures are lower than the plants normally like, you have to heat the whole thing which takes an absolutely colossal amount of energy.
Simplified, growing crops is all about collecting energy into your system, then exporting it in a form that your standard 100 watt humans can use. If you're doing that with 200 square feet of solar panels, you're just not getting much energy there.
It comes down to a function of surface area, doesn't it? It seems unintuitive but the verticality honestly makes it too complicated to trust my math skills. If you just stack 10 layers of this...
It comes down to a function of surface area, doesn't it? It seems unintuitive but the verticality honestly makes it too complicated to trust my math skills. If you just stack 10 layers of this stuff into a warehouse and grow it very efficiently, all year, then... maybe?
Getting it within ten miles of city limits is still a vast improvement over shipping it hundreds or thousands of miles as we do today. Doesn't have to be downtown in prime real estate, just within an hour's drive of downtown. Ideally, every large building would have a floor or two dedicated to farming, but we're a long way off from that sort of thinking.
Right now we're in the 'convert old buildings to farms' phase, because that's the cheap way to get started. Eventually these companies will make enough money to start the next phase, which is building a skyscraper from scratch just for farming. That's when it can really take off, it needs to be designed that way to really take advantage of the farming tech and control all emissions/generate power. In eight years we went from zero vertical farms to several hundred worldwide, this trend is just getting started.
I for one am waiting for a world in which I can get fresh, ripe, and local tomatoes year round.
Just wondering, have you got a source on vertical farms generating more power than they use? I skimmed the article and searched for power, electricity, and generation and I couldn't find anything. I'm just confused as to how that can possibly work. Worth noting though, that vertical farming would be a great use for cheap, non-backed-up solar power.
Cover the rooftop with solar arrays, set up biogas capture systems to grab all of the emissions, and do composting on site for waste greens. Then you can potentially generate a power profit. As far as I know, there aren't any farms that have done this and are providing a net power benefit yet. I doubt that will ever be possible unless the farm is designed and built for it from the start. Converted farms living in old industrial buildings will likely never provide a net power benefit. Here's an example.
Still doesn't really make sense to me. Even if you're capturing 100% of the energy from the sun (in reality solar panels are only like 20% efficient. You're then turning that energy back into light which also isn't an efficient process. The plants are then turning that radiation into energy bearing chemicals (sugars and carbohydrates) which are being shipped out. Where is this excess power coming from?
These systems don't require much power to operate - heating the buildings is the largest expense, the LED lighting systems provide a massive energy reduction over fluorescent and sodium. The changes in lighting costs are the only reason this has become practical enough to start happening. The solar panels and biogas are enough to power the facility provided it's not being run in a year-round cold climate. The profit is expected to come from selling excess biogas.
How is that possible though? If you've got say, 200 sq foot of roof to work with, that's like 3kw of power. Now each floor is going to require pretty close to that for the plants to grow, since that's already less than what they'd get from the sun since solar panels are only operating at around 20% efficiency. I guess because you're cutting out infrared and UV, and maybe even green light you can gain some efficiency there, but LEDs are still only like 50% efficient. At the end of the line you're putting out 10% of the energy you've collected in the form of solar radiation that's hitting the roof. So maybe you could have a single grow floor and still be energy neutral if you're only spitting out the wavelengths that plants like.
I fail to see how you could power multiple floors this way though, and especially if you're saying you come out energy positive. Maybe if you're burning all of the biogas the plants produce, but 1, that means you're not actually exporting crops, and 2, you're no longer carbon neutral, and what's the point of doing the whole thing? All of that is only speaking of the light. If you're in an area where the temperatures are lower than the plants normally like, you have to heat the whole thing which takes an absolutely colossal amount of energy.
Simplified, growing crops is all about collecting energy into your system, then exporting it in a form that your standard 100 watt humans can use. If you're doing that with 200 square feet of solar panels, you're just not getting much energy there.
It comes down to a function of surface area, doesn't it? It seems unintuitive but the verticality honestly makes it too complicated to trust my math skills. If you just stack 10 layers of this stuff into a warehouse and grow it very efficiently, all year, then... maybe?