Industrial grow room lighting - FYI, thoughts

Growroom Design
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I work in controls and automation. The multinational I work for bids on all types of industrial and commercial controls; my specialty is lighting.

Normally, when we had a grow facility to bid, the process controls were excluded (owner supplied), and fixture schedules not shared.

Today, however, was different. I had a meeting about a major r&d facility being built in the interior of BC. I thought long and hard about posting some drawings, but I’m pretty sure I’d be violating the consultants copyright. So I’ll describe it.

The rooms are numerous, as you would imagine. There are airlocks and whole areas of building dedicated to filtering both I coming and outgoing air and water. There is a unit substation dedicated to the building with a 14.4kV service. Main 600V service is 2kA, EM 600V service is 1.2kA, on a biogas generator.

Now, what surprised me, with all the LED advances in recent years, is that ALL process lighting is specified as a mixture, 2:1 in qty, of DE HPS 1K, and 315 CMH respectively. Both by Sun Systems. Specified with “no substitutes”. To put this into perspective, I have 5-6 poles of 347v 15A, per “r&d room”. That’s a lot of power, and they are spending a shitload of money on lighting.

So, my question is - why not LED? This is an R&D facility after all, right? The rooms are small-ish, they have “demo” greenhouses, even a “male” room, airlocked from the “pollination room”, airlocked from the “breeding flower”.

Why not LED?

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I work construction and have seen quite a few cultivation facility plans and the electrical drawings are just 1000w HPS, MH veg and T5 for clones.

I guess R&D facilities would be different?

Makes no sense to me. 315w CMH at that bulk is a little less than $1/w. DE are about $0.35/w so that makes sense.

These facilities have over 560kw of flowering lights. That’s a lot of bulbs polluting the world

Fixture schedules and even equipment schedules (rotovaps, vacuum ovens, freezers, etc.) Are shared around here. Maybe different in America

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I’m sure the owner supplied stuff is on a drawing somewhere, just not part of the package I see usually - just specs for drops and connectors.

And that’s my question too - at the price of CMH, why not go LED? I didn’t do it because most of my stuff was free, stored from before, or dirt cheap off craigslist. So at least I have an excuse

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Amazing. [smh]

:sunny: Don’t they know? :confused:

Even Adam Smith would be shaking his Adam Smith head at such investments.

It’s reminding me of abandoned diamond mining in (former)german southwest africa, Namibia, or any other number of historic follies.

Take Belgiums conquest & butchery in the Congo… all for a couple of decades worth of absurd profit that disappeared like a burst bubble when someone else grew some rubber trees.

My point is… how the #%$^&* can that investment ever be paid off on a market that will collapse/implode right as it’s born, because $ projections have almost entirely been based in the prohibition scheme.

and now i’m getting worked up & cranky :older_man:

:smile:

:evergreen_tree:

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The combination of D.E hps and CMH is the absolute best combination of lighting. This is how to achieve the best quality bud, period.

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Probably dissipation rates. Most LED’s aren’t worth a damn unless they’re right on the canopy. Distance to source is the issue.

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:hushed: don’t share all the secrets now…

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I believe it has everything to do with dissipation rates,as that’s one of the reasons why I’m dropping the idea of leds and looking into hps with a ballest that can run a mh as well, tried and true at the time being

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Leds are a lot like lighting with laser pointers straight(ish) beams of light concentrated in an area. With hid you have much more spread and its more cost effective at the start. Plus id venture to say a facility like that will be testing grow methods,strains, and stresses. Any grow that’s over a few thousand watts is pretty much guaranteed to be hid. If there is a multi thousand kw grow here that runs exclusively led i would love to see it cuz I have many questions haha. Plus people just don’t switch off of the normal path that’s shown results. I hope led gets brought to the big party soon but imo it has a way to go still

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This is what I run as well, in 600 and 1K variants. Not DEs thought. Was looking forward to experimenting with LED, some people say it blows their old 600s out of the water.

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Sure would like to know which ones they use

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LEDs are expensive and experimental. HID scales well and has been the industry standard for years. Very few commercial grows use LEDs exclusively. I did hear about some places putting a 30-watt per square foot rule in place. In that situation, LEDs would probably be better.

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Well, these guys are WAY over that number with their CMH/HPS blend. I’m looking at one flower room now, about 20x15’. It has 26kW available on its dedicated circuits. At 80% cap to full load on the branch cct that is roughly 21kW, or about 70W/sq-ft.

I think the farm hydro rate in BC is around $0.08/kWh. 21kW at $0.08 for 12 hrs/day works out to $20-ish/day
Let’s say they can light appropriately with LED for 10kW lower. That saves $10/day. $3650/yr.

Replacement lamps? $2K/year at least. Probably closer to $3K if they are a true R&D house

5-year difference: 33-35K? Per room, over 40 rooms.

$1.4M

Worth it? I would have thought so, but maybe not…

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I would think it’s worth it. Dont forget the savings in HVAC bills.

It could just be a case of teaching an old dog new tricks.

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