Greenhouse Lighting Controls

This project continued a study begun for PG&E to evaluate the potential of adaptive lighting controls in greenhouses. The tasks were to gather more user experience from the grower, estimate energy savings potential, record the grower’s observations on crop yield and quality, and conduct outreach to other growers and industry stakeholders. The Project Team could not collect field data as hoped, so the Team created a model to estimate savings potential based on typical photoperiod, daily light integral (DLI), and glazing transmittance parameters. Working with industry experts, the Project Team estimated 9% and 11% potential annual energy savings for cannabis and tomatoes, respectively. As a next step, the Project Team recommended that CalNEXT facilitate pilot projects by industry actors to study how effectively the technology could be incentivized through Normalized Metered Energy Consumption (NMEC) projects.