PlantLab Revolutionizes Farming: No Sunlight or Windows, Less Water, Better Food | Hacker News Reader

PlantLab Revolutionizes Farming: No Sunlight or Windows, Less Water, Better Food

singularityhub.com

23 pointsph0rque8 comments

Let me think...

  Total solar irradiance on earth = 1.336 kW/m2
  Leds @ 15% efficiency = 8.9kW/m2
  Lettuce takes 8 weeks to mature
  8 weeks * 7 days * 12 hours * 8.9 kW = 5.9mWh
  Wholesale electricity costs ~$100/mWh

Nearly $600 for two dozen heads of lettuce? Somebody tell me I'm out by an order of magnitude, please.

Lettuce doesn't require 100% of sunlight to mature. Also the sun is not at full strength over a set piece of land for 12 hours, I don't think.

Conventional farming has many costs such as pesticides, fertilizer, fuel for farming equipment, transportation costs (fuel), and don't forget land.

Allowing food to be produced anywhere with limited resources is amazing and with 7 billion mouths to feed agriculture needs some major innovation. It hasn't fundamentally changed since the dawn of human civilization.

I've done calculations before where vegetables come out to cost between $0.30 and $0.60 per pound, so it would be profitable with current tech.

However, I believe the future is in rooftop greenhouses with a transparent solar cell film covering, where the solar cells absorb in the green frequencies not needed for the plants.

My gut feeling is that it's hard to see how this can be efficient on a large scale. The 10% water is impressive, but it's weighed against:

- cost of buildings

- cost of climate control for the growing areas

- cost of electricity, for the artificial light and all the gadgetry needed to keep it running

couple comments comes to mind:

- great and obvious [ once somebody's come up with it ] solution to decrease energy consumption of indoor plantations : "Plants don’t want the green spectrum, and many of the wavelengths just heat the leaves and evaporate water. Instead PlantLab gives their plants light from red and blue LEDs, ..."

- why Dutch? what is so special about their situation that stimulated the innovation? :)

The Dutch seem to be the leaders in high-tech food production. I've read somewhere that they are net exporters of food.

They need to make their technology public before Monstanto bombs them.

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