[amannamedtruth]

nice breakdown there.

Kind of one of the main reasons I mention organics in the first post. They could do better growing microgreens in flats of coco or heads in small containers, compost that 'waste' for sure. Switch to aquaponics, almost there...

The japanese have had this thing for over-priced, 'high end' produce for a bit.

https://firstwefeast.com/eat/worlds-m...ensive-fruits/

Think they could generate that energy using solar?

[titoon29]

Originally Posted by amannamedtruth

nice breakdown there.

Kind of one of the main reasons I mention organics in the first post. They could do better growing microgreens in flats of coco or heads in small containers, compost that 'waste' for sure. Switch to aquaponics, almost there...

The japanese have had this thing for over-priced, 'high end' produce for a bit.

https://firstwefeast.com/eat/worlds-m...ensive-fruits/

Think they could generate that energy using solar?

Hey amannamedtruth,

thanks for sharing your finding by the way !

Indeed organic/aquaponics would be better ! However my calculation is only based on the energy cost for lighting and powering up the system, doesn't even take in account the nutrients ( wonder why they didn't made a real life cycle analysis ^^). So in any case, I don't really see this going large scale anytime soon, esp with increasing energy prices.

Regarding solar, sure they could. It would take approximately, in Japan, 10 times the square footage of the factory to produce those 370 MWh per month, about 14,000 m2.

[barnyard]

they must really like lettuce

[titoon29]

Originally Posted by barnyard

they must really like lettuce

[stoned-trout]

I seen that .. I done stacked tray growing with leaf lettuce...I got simpson lettuce to grow anywhere with low lighting too...I miss my greenhouses.....those setups would work good with sprouts too..i like beansprouts...

[Ftscustm]

You do have to love the innovation, if not the true costs out lined by those at I.C.Mag who have their scientific heads screwed on. To me this is the seed of an idea, the beginning of possibility and most of all, hope: we all need that.

[sprinkl]

Why on earth wouldn't they profit from the sun simply by getting a glass roof? With some clever rotation they wouldn't need half of their lights...
While indoor MJ growing is proving to be way more expensive than outdoor, they're now going to try to invent the wheel with vegetables.
I guess the lighting industry needs some cashcow to keep "inventing" "new" technologies at breakneck turtle speed lol.

[OGEvilgenius]

Originally Posted by titoon29

Hey amannamedtruth,

thanks for sharing your finding by the way !

Indeed organic/aquaponics would be better ! However my calculation is only based on the energy cost for lighting and powering up the system, doesn't even take in account the nutrients ( wonder why they didn't made a real life cycle analysis ^^). So in any case, I don't really see this going large scale anytime soon, esp with increasing energy prices.

Regarding solar, sure they could. It would take approximately, in Japan, 10 times the square footage of the factory to produce those 370 MWh per month, about 14,000 m2.

The amount of energy required to produce a solar cell is immense. Solar energy really isn't very promising as far as solving energy concerns - at least not with current tech, maybe those 3d nano cell panels have a chance.

Hemp production on the other hand...

[titoon29]

Originally Posted by Ftscustm

You do have to love the innovation, if not the true costs out lined by those at I.C.Mag who have their scientific heads screwed on. To me this is the seed of an idea, the beginning of possibility and most of all, hope: we all need that.

Agreed Ftscustm, we love innovation here. What I personally don't like hence my posts, is to attach it to biased numbers in order to sell it. We should be able to like it for what it is, a prototype, and not because it actually make 10,000 lettuce heads, which are 8 times lighter than actual "classic" lettuce heads, if you know what i mean

Originally Posted by sprinkl

Why on earth wouldn't they profit from the sun simply by getting a glass roof? With some clever rotation they wouldn't need half of their lights...
While indoor MJ growing is proving to be way more expensive than outdoor, they're now going to try to invent the wheel with vegetables.
I guess the lighting industry needs some cashcow to keep "inventing" "new" technologies at breakneck turtle speed lol.

Hey sprinkl, I guess they gotta make some $$$, which they wouldn' t if they were selling a greenhouse that actually use the sun as you said !

Originally Posted by OGEvilgenius

The amount of energy required to produce a solar cell is immense. Solar energy really isn't very promising as far as solving energy concerns - at least not with current tech, maybe those 3d nano cell panels have a chance.

Hemp production on the other hand...

Hey OGEvilgenius, thanks for your comment

I am indeed very aware of the energy needed to make solar cells.
It is quite a bit, talking about immense, well I don' t really agree with that word.
As far as I know, at the moment the energy payback for a solar panel is about 2-3 years.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...64032112006478
It means that it will take 2 to 3 years for the solar panel on your roof to return the energy that was used to make it. Then, it is "free" energy from the sun for the rest of the life of the panel, which should be about 15 years minimum.

In no case I was advocating its uses in that indoor farm case, which I stated earlier is a total waste of energy, I was answering to the OP which was asking about solar, to develop why it is not really appropriate in that case.

I agree with you, solar is not the answer to our energy concerns, the answer will lie in stopping wasting so much energy. Then maybe, we can use a combination of renewable energies to sustain ourselves So for instance, let' s stop thinking that it is ok to use 12 kWh to produce a kg of lettuce, or to use the sun to transform its energy to electricity than re transform it into lighting for growing large scale, with all the losses involved with each step to transform the energy, and the embeded energy required to manufacture the appliances needed for this "farm" .

[titoon29]

Hey OGEvilGenius,

Let' s talk hemp, since I think this would also be interesting.

Sorry for all the following numbers, they are needed, but the conclusion will be made more simple to understand for those who want to go straight to the point

According to https://www.votehemp.com/PDF/The_Cas...iofuel2008.pdf

305 kg of ethanol can be produced with one hectare of hemp
with a density of about 0,8, it would make about (305/0.8) 380 L/hectare yield.
A Liter of ethanol contains about 23.5 MJ/L or 6.5 kWh / L

With a specialy designed engine to produce electricty, we could expect about 80% energy recovery ( can' t really find easy source on that so I doubled the efficiency of diesel engine)

So for a Liter of ethanol, we could get about 5.2 Kwh.
Hence for an hectare about (5.2 * 380 ) 2000 kWh, or 2 MWh usable.

Let' s consider a beautiful climate, where you could grow 4 crops a year.
That would lead to 4*2 = 8 MWh / hectare / year, or about 0.7 MWh / hectare / month

If this hemp was used for powering this factory all year long,
to sustain such a production, we would need 370 / 0.7 = 530 hectares.
530 hectares of hemp to produce ethanol, which will be then converted to 30 tons of lettuce per month.

A leafy type of lettuce will produce about 500 kg / ha or 0.5 tons/ha . (https://agriinfo.in/?page=topic&superid=1&topicid=956 )
In our beautiful theoretical climates, we could expect a crop every two months, so 6 crops a year.

Hence, if we used these 530 hectares to produce lettuce directly, we would produce 6*530*0.5 = 1530 tons per year, or 132 tons per/month.

With the same surfaces :
Grow Hemp, Ethanol, Power the farm, Grow Lettuc, Crop Lettuce : 30 tons per months (not including manufacturing of the farm, nutrients)
Grow Lettuce, Crop lettuce : 132 tons per months.

Here is why we should focus on simple systems, low energy use, and keep prototypes such as the one demonstrated as what they are, prototypes.

Please feel free to comment my calculations!