Plant factory lighting: gold mines that have not been excavated in the LED market
March 14, 2023
Since the lighting system of traditional plant factories consumes a lot of energy, LED is currently the most energy-saving technology in agricultural lighting applications. PIDA pointed out that in the fluorescent plant plant, the lighting energy consumption accounts for up to 82. The use of LED instead of the traditional lighting source can greatly reduce the lighting energy consumption of these agricultural production. In the Netherlands, for example, the LED light-filling experiment in the greenhouse shows that LEDs can save 50-80 compared with traditional high-pressure sodium lamps and metal halide lamps; in traditional plant, if the traditional light source is used, it needs 0.5 per square meter. kW light source, while the LED only needs 0.27kW, the power consumption can be reduced by 50.
Taiwan accounts for 25 of the global LED component market, and the plant factory has recently become one of the hot topics in the LED industry. Since agricultural lighting is very different from general consumer lighting design, from chip packaging to IC design must be designed for the characteristics of plant factories, so almost all Taiwan LED suppliers have announced that they will enter this field and extend their reach to mainland China. .
Two years ago, Everlight Electronics signed strategic cooperation agreements with dozens of internationally renowned companies such as Philips Lighting, Mitsubishi Chemical, Panasonic (China) Electric, Yangzi Electric, and Ou Lin Group. We signed a letter of intent for technical innovation and market development in the fields of LED plant light illumination, industrial control, air conditioning environmental control, nutrient solution, etc., with a view to developing some potential LED special lighting products in this field.
In addition, Japanese company Stanley Electric recently introduced LED lighting for indoor fruit growing. The company calculates the angle of illumination that is most suitable for the growth of fruit trees, reduces the illumination angle of LED lights, increases the illumination per unit area, and cooperates with sunlight to reduce the time. The company plans to introduce indoor LED plant lighting that accelerates plant growth in the market in the near future.
However, regardless of the artificial light source, there are problems of electro-optical conversion loss and waste heat. The waste heat in the closed room needs to use a large amount of air conditioner to discharge; secondly, the lamp must have a design capable of concentrating the planting area and deriving the heat source to enhance the planting. Efficiency, which in turn involves LED die packaging and luminaire mechanism design, so the artificial light source selection of plant factories is a very important part.