Is this, or could, LED gardens be more efficient per sqft than leaving crops directly in the sunlight? Since a lot of spectrum is unused for photosythesis [1][2], the conversion of {full spectrum -> electricity -> required spectrum} seems potentially more efficient.<p>Another interesting idea would be to create solar panels that only convert the lost spectrum into {electricty -> required spectrum} [3]<p>[1] <a href="http://bernardkatz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/spectrum-of-sun.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://bernardkatz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/spectrum-o...</a>
[2] <a href="http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/pigment.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/pigme...</a>
[3] <a href="http://mitei.mit.edu/news/transparent-solar-cells" rel="nofollow">http://mitei.mit.edu/news/transparent-solar-cells</a>
I wonder if they can use this tech in the space station or maybe a mission to Mars? Doesn't seem to need much water and we can probably use solar power to power the lights?
Another lettuce farm. Does anyone have a part number for the LED growing lamps that GE makes, do they have a 'standard' version available? There wasn't anything relevant on their products page at gelighting.com (<a href="http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/na/solutions/led-lamps-and-modules/index.jsp" rel="nofollow">http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/na/solutions/led-lamps...</a>)
Hand wavy arguments as to why this is a bad idea are ... well, just hand wavy.<p><<<p>Solar is ~20% efficient LED's are less than ~40% efficient so you would need more land area for solar farms than you save by growing indoors. On top of that you need to pay for all your capital costs.
There are other issues, but if this was close to cost effective you would be seeing this in Iceland which gets little sunlight in the winter and has cheap energy costs. Instead they use suplimental lighting inside green houses to boost production.<p>>><p>I thought the vertical stacking makes more efficient use of the light than the single layer you find in a farm or green house. It means that even though the light is produced inefficiently the vertical stacking is intended to cancel out that inefficiency by using the light more efficiently. Moreover, the optimization of the plant's exposure to light through automated means adds to increased efficiency in the plant's use of the light.<p>If every grower did this, it would (or could) destroy Monsanto's business model. I love it.
This is good news for farmers around Fukushima - no-one buys food from there for obvious reasons, which is why they started to grow indoor hydroponic farms, but not on a large scale yet [1]. This way the plants don't get into contact with irradiated soil, but I doubt that people will buy them.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-10/fukushima-seeks-revival-in-radiation-free-farms-with-no-soil.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-10/fukushima-seeks-rev...</a>
In countries/areas where land prices are very expensive, this might help.<p>In the US I don't see this helping with common food stock (wheat/corn/cotton/soybean/tobacco/...). I could see this used for presentation foods (foods we judge more from looks) since you can control everything so much more you will likely get more products that can demand a premium price.
This reminds me of Garden Fresh Farms indoor farms:
<a href="http://gardenfreshfarms.com/" rel="nofollow">http://gardenfreshfarms.com/</a>
In average, one acre of any crop brings about a thousand dollars per year in revenue. With this method it would increase by 100-fold.<p>That's a real agricultural industrialization.