Ok, I've said this before... back when I wrote Patent Mine to be exact, but it's worth saying it again.
While I'm a fan of these 'indoor greenhouses' they almost always are used wrong.
As in the article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jboyd/2016/07/28/can-next-generation-veggie-factories-finally-grow-a-profit/2/#598e21222896
an enormous amount of energy is wasted running the air conditioning to keep these indoor greenhouses running efficiently... ie, lights make heat, even LED lights.
But heat is only a bad thing during summer (a time when you can grow plants outside making indoors redundant!!!)
Back then, I said (Worth repeating) that the ideal indoor greenhouse would run during end of fall trough the beginning of spring... as the house heating system.
See, plants are very shade tolerant, they can go without light for a few days if needed. So if they come on when you need to add heat to a house or building, then turn off an hour latter, plants think of it like clouds. No big deal.
But growing fresh vegetables during the winter is a huge bonus, and when you consider that you can grow a few thousand heads of lettuce AND heat your home/building on roughly the same amount of electricity you would have spent JUST heating your home anyway... it's really a no brainer.
Most homes have space in basements or crawl spaces if you wanted to do a 'retrofit' or, think of a 'space-heater' model that looks like a book shelf with blackout curtains so it won't keep you up at night if it has to come on.
The problem is people want to get rich selling the lettuce at 2 or 3 times what it costs to import from 3,000 miles away and that's the only economic model they can see. When instead, the 'money' is in selling winter heaters that grow food and clean the air for free.
But then, I'm just a SciFi author, no need to listen to me :)
While I'm a fan of these 'indoor greenhouses' they almost always are used wrong.
As in the article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jboyd/2016/07/28/can-next-generation-veggie-factories-finally-grow-a-profit/2/#598e21222896
an enormous amount of energy is wasted running the air conditioning to keep these indoor greenhouses running efficiently... ie, lights make heat, even LED lights.
But heat is only a bad thing during summer (a time when you can grow plants outside making indoors redundant!!!)
Back then, I said (Worth repeating) that the ideal indoor greenhouse would run during end of fall trough the beginning of spring... as the house heating system.
See, plants are very shade tolerant, they can go without light for a few days if needed. So if they come on when you need to add heat to a house or building, then turn off an hour latter, plants think of it like clouds. No big deal.
But growing fresh vegetables during the winter is a huge bonus, and when you consider that you can grow a few thousand heads of lettuce AND heat your home/building on roughly the same amount of electricity you would have spent JUST heating your home anyway... it's really a no brainer.
Most homes have space in basements or crawl spaces if you wanted to do a 'retrofit' or, think of a 'space-heater' model that looks like a book shelf with blackout curtains so it won't keep you up at night if it has to come on.
The problem is people want to get rich selling the lettuce at 2 or 3 times what it costs to import from 3,000 miles away and that's the only economic model they can see. When instead, the 'money' is in selling winter heaters that grow food and clean the air for free.
But then, I'm just a SciFi author, no need to listen to me :)
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