Indoor Vertical Farming offers an interesting approach to relieve conventional agriculture. Crops are staggered vertically on shelves and grown under optimal light and nutrient conditions. This can increase area-based productivity many times over. This has not only economic but also environmental benefits, such as avoiding fertilizer input into nature, reducing fertilizer and water consumption, eliminating the use of pesticides, and shortening many supply chains.
The efficiency of an indoor vertical farm extends from the technical implementation of the growing environment to the metabolism of the plant crop. By considering the amount of energy sourced from a plant to harvest, high-energy agricultural products, such as wheat, potatoes or rice, are not considered for Indoor Vertical Farming due to the energy-intensive provision of artificial lighting and air conditioning.
In indoor vertical farming, the electricity cost of artificial lighting, due to the complete substitution of sunlight, is the largest cost factor. To increase the profitability of indoor vertical farming, in this project sunlight is used directly by moving the farm from an enclosed production hall to a greenhouse. This enormously reduces the amount of light to be substituted artificially, but causes inhomogeneous growing conditions. These are eliminated by intelligent control of the LED modules, creating holistically homogeneous growing conditions.
Through interfaculty cooperation with the Institute of Horticultural Production Systems, vacant greenhouse space is thankfully used for the installation of a demonstrator plant.
Project Funding
The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affaircs and Climate Action (BMWK) in the form of an EXIST start-up grant, which is co-financed by the European Social Fund (ESF).
Contact
30419 Hannover
30419 Hannover
30419 Hannover
