Farmers using hydroponics and LEDs to grow underground to harvest first crop | Hacker News Reader

Farmers using hydroponics and LEDs to grow underground to harvest first crop

theguardian.com

43 pointsherendin18 comments

How exactly is this innovative? The article doesn't make it clear what aspect is an "innovation" over others in the same field. These people don't seem to be first to use LEDs, or grow microgreens...

EDIT: the title of the submission has changed since I wrote this.

I don't think these guys are the first, but UV LEDs might be fairly new. They allow very much less electricity yet give plants an optimal frequency of light.

What are the possibilities for this in areas that are far too hot/dry for crops? Underground growing retains water and can be more easily temperature controlled.

Given that photosynthesis does not use the full spectrum, how efficient do LEDs and solar panels have to be before you have a net gain on solar energy converted into photosynthesis?

I thought this was about harvesting in space.

Replacing the sun here seems inefficient.

Light from the sun is broad spectrum. Photosynthesis uses only part of the spectrum. In a charmed world, you could power LEDs using energy from the unused spectrum, and be more efficient than sunlight.

Edit:

Turns out, there is a Y-Combinator company making agricultural LEDs:

https://blog.ycombinator.com/transcend-yc-s15-makes-extra-ef...

Absorption spectra of Chlorophyll: http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7A.html

Yes, but the sun is free. It's not like plants grow poorly in sunlight.

They do grow poorly in sunlight in plenty of places. For example, places where water need to be conserved.

Growing in the middle of the city might just make up for the power used for the LEDs. Less fuel to transport to the customers. Hopefully less pesticides too.

I am usually the first one to come on here and say if you dig deep you will find that the numbers do not work. Replacing the sun is inefficient.

But this time it may be different because of the extremely low cycle times for the micro greens. If they got a very good deal on leasing the tunnels the economics may very well work.

Two problems, one is that they probably can rather quickly outgrow their market and second what if the micro greens fad ends?

Seems like the target issue here is water scarcity. Indoor farms require considerably less water.

I lived in London for a couple of years... And I wouldn't dare to say that water scarcity is a big problem there. I saw the Sun a couple of times though.

Edit: Sorry to the Londoner that down-voted my comment. I didn't mean to be rude to you, guys.

Good preparation for space exploration, moon/mars colonies, where energy might be abundant, but surface access and water will be resources in short supply.

There is absolutely no way this will be commercially viable or environmentally sustainable. I think the real business opportunity is finding out why high end chefs are using 48-hour produce- that sounds like a supply problem and there should be no real supply problem for such greens (these are luxury items with a known level of demand), since they grow natively in the area.

Very interesting. I can't wait to see what this brings. Especially with the hydroponics idea of not needing to use soil.

Hydroponics is already very common in above-ground vegetable greenhouses.

lookup dutch bucket system ... it is soil-less and use the same water/nutrients solution over and over (recirculating), you just need to fill the thank

TL;DR; The novelty of plants grown underground, plus the appearance of extra freshness = $ from an entertainment point of view.

Which is cool, people love the idea of doing things underground. It unfortunately almost never makes practical sense but neither does most entertaining things.

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