The Smart Growth Blog

What are the cumulative benefits of energy efficient equipment?

Written by Geoff Brown | Feb 1, 2024

In this episode of FAQ with AGIQ, we'll discuss some of the cumulative benefits from running an efficient facility. While lower costs and increased profits are fundamental, achieving efficiency involves many other various considerations.


Episode Transcription:
In this episode of FAQ with AGIQ, I'm going to talk about some of the cumulative benefits from running a really efficient facility. I know you're probably wondering, well, it's not obvious. Like my costs are reduced, my profits are higher. And yes, I mean, fundamentally it is that, but there's a lot of different aspects to achieving that, that you need to consider when you're building a facility.

So, some obvious ones; the more efficient your HVAC is, the less energy it consumes to do the same work. Some maybe less obvious ones like LED lighting is significantly more expensive than discharge, but consumes less energy for roughly the same micromole output, THAT allows you to reduce your HVAC size. So, by spending a little bit more money in lighting, you're actually reducing your total spend on HVAC and reducing your energy consumption.

Some other options available to you are things like, a sunrise and sunset, and a staggered lights on can reduce your electrical demand from your utility and reduce your overall energy costs. Even something as simple as ensuring that your fertigation system is flushing an appropriate amount of water through your media so that you're not overproducing RO water, a significant energy expense to your facility.

Little gains like that can really up your efficiency and couple that with really good room or environmental control means that your yields go up while your costs go down. And that's what really drives an efficient facility. And if you're able to do that, you're going to be much more profitable in the long run and be able to sustain some of the challenging conditions that are going to exist in this market for some time to come.

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