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I think it is a pretty cool fact that because of the ability to use LED lights in this manner where they emit only the ranges of light wavelengths that are bene
by jjeaff 4y ago
I think it is a pretty cool fact that because of the ability to use LED lights in this manner where they emit only the ranges of light wavelengths that are beneficial to plants, you can actually capture sunlight with solar panels. Convert that light to electricity. Then re-emit that electricity as light through these narrow range LEDs as well as store it and emit it over longer periods of time. You actually end up with more plant growth than would be possible if the plants were directly in the sun.
- ozcap 4y agoThat wouldn’t be possible to get a higher output of the suns energy after going through a solar panel as well as a lighting circuit. Plants benefit more from the intensity of light rather than a slightly preferable spectrum.
- marmadukester39 4y agoIs this true?
- camtarn 4y agoThe bit about plants benefitting more from intensity is, as far as I understand it, false - plants are only sensitive to light in fairly narrow wavelengths, which is why grow lights aren't necessarily white. (Source: partner is a professional horticulturist who sourced grow lights for the botanic gardens he works at) However, GP may be right about the conversion efficiency destroying any gains that you might get from re-emitting light in only those wavelengths. The energy conversion efficiency of even the most efficient LEDs seems to only be about 50%, with the rest emitted as heat. (Source: just a quick Google, so take with a grain of salt) And then you've got the solar panel efficiency on top of that, plus any necessary voltage conversion. Definitely quite a tough ask.
- jjeaff 4y agoI don't think you are correct here. It may vary by plant species, but plants grown under grow lights in the correct spectrum grow significantly faster than a control plant in direct sunlight.
- 323 4y agoPlants are grown on surfaces measured in tens of percents of country sizes. There is no way to produce enough solar panels to power that.
- Narkov 4y agoTalking out aloud here...could vertical farming help here? My theory is that we only use so much land because it needs access to the sun. If we use LED's and stack vertically, we can condense down the footprint.
- knaekhoved 4y agoThe constraint in this hypothetical scenario is space for solar panels, not space for plants.
- danans 4y ago> Plants are grown on surfaces measured in tens of percents of country sizes. That is cereal crop agriculture, which can't be done in vertical farms anyways. Stuff like this is targeted at vegetables and herbs. There are still scale problems, but nothing like the kind associated with cereal crops. The main issue as I understand it is that the sun is free outdoors, so it is hard to justify the cost of the equipment for indoor LED horticulture.
- danans 4y ago> You actually end up with more plant growth than would be possible if the plants were directly in the sun. More plant growth and less loss to pests. But the sun is free and agricultural land is cheap, so I know of few plants (other than the obvious one) that are economical to grow this way.
- imtringued 4y agohttps://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/02/vertical-farming-ecosystem-services.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/02/vertical-farming-eco... >The “farm” produces four harvests per year. With every harvest, enough wheat is grown to make one loaf of bread (580 grams), which has a cost of at least 345 euros. >Calculated at a yield of 175 kilowatt-hours per square meter of solar panel per year, the indoor cultivation of 1 m2 of wheat requires 20 m2 of solar panels.
- jjeaff 4y agoI don't think wheat is a good candidate. But also, that article is about an art installation and it doesn't appear to be using narrow band light emission as the light color directly over the plants looks rather natural.