Horticultural LED lighting company Sollum Technologies, which hangs its hat on providing controls that allow growers to alter spectra, intensity, and dose on the fly, is now adding features to that system.
The Montreal-based company has enhanced its SUN as a Service (SUNaaS) cloud-based software to help growers further limit their electricity expenditures, but also, conversely, to help assure that lighting does not shut down when it is needed during the “load-shedding” hours when a utility might otherwise curtail the flow of energy.
The improvements also include enriched recipe management.
On the electricity side, Sollum has added granularity to SUNaaS’ ability to monitor usage.
“Tracking the electricity usage of each fixture, each zone, or the entire greenhouse allows growers to assess the impact of supplemental light on each crop’s productivity and implement strategic adjustments to the light recipe in order to conserve energy,” a Sollum spokesperson said.
Along the same lines, Sollum has added new layers of data to “help maximize the use of natural sunlight” — in other words, to further ensure the lights are off when not needed. The control system will now respond to data about photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) and the daily light integral (DLI).
“The data serves to adjust the light quantity to meet the plants' varying needs throughout the day, and ensures that crops receive the exact amount of light necessary for optimal growth,” the spokesperson said.
The system can now, if necessary, also override load shedding that would otherwise automatically curtail electricity during expensive peak hours. It does this by increasing the electricity cap on a variable basis.
“Given the particular challenges load shedding presents to greenhouse growers, who require consistent energy use to maintain optimal growing conditions, this cap offers a dynamic control over energy expenditure,” the spokesperson noted. “The flexibility to modify the cap at any time ensures that growers can adjust their energy use in response to both planned and unexpected load-shedding events, minimizing their impact on operations.”
Recipe enhancements include additional insights on red, green, blue, and far-red distribution.
The additions to SUNaaS could help the recent stirrings in the lighting industry’s previously stagnant horticultural sector to continue.
Sollum provides horticultural lighting as well as controls. Its customers typically cite SUNaaS as a deciding factor in their choice to implement. For example, Red Sun Farms Ontario in Kingsville is experimenting with variable spectra including far red to help with mini cucumbers. Likewise, Proplant Propagation in Jarvis, Ontario is trialing dynamic spectra on eggplant, tomatoes, and other crops. Growers Les Serres Bertrand in Lanoraie, Québec and Pleasant View Gardens in Hampshire also recently mentioned the ability to dynamically change light mixes with their Sollum implementations.
Other vendors such as Signify and its Fluence division also encourage the use of dynamic lighting controls in horticulture.
Different crops prefer different mixes of light spectra, intensity, and duration, although scientists are still probing the combinations in order to gain more precise understanding. LED lighting, with its digital programmability, is well suited for delivering and studying varying spectra and their effect on different crops.
MARK HALPER is a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist ([email protected]).
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