Resource efficiency and profitability are not mutually exclusive. The right design, construction an equipment can produce a cannabis facility that respond to the market, optimizing yield when prices are high and generating normal yields at reduced operational costs when they are not. Likewise, grow rooms within the facility can achieve a spectrum between these two outcomes, aligning yield with expected price of a given set of strains. A better understanding of plant balances and physics has led to a new generation of greenhouse control using thermal curtains, diffusion shade curtains and feed forward lighting. Understanding vapor pressure deficit can greatly reduce energy costs once the grower understands the interaction between light, temperature and enriched CO2. Despite the additional capital expenditures of water recirculation, growers report an ROI of just 2-3 years due to fertilizer savings, while fulfilling the promise of >90% water consumption than field production.
Topical areas include:
Renewable energy sources and interval metering
Saving energy with shade and thermal curtains
VPD-based control
Yield response to light
Strategies for reducing peak loads
Flower quality response to light spectrum
CO2 enrichment for replacing high light and heating
PowerScore benchmarking and best practices
Rob has over 30 years of experience in plant growth facility management, plant research and commercial production. At Purdue University, he brought online and managed a computer- controlled 40,000 ft 2 research facility, made up of 25 greenhouses and over 60 growth chambers and grow rooms. He was responsible for hundreds of CEA studies involving flowering, food and medicinal species. He served on design teams for greenhouse projects and one of the first automated machine-vision phenotyping centers in the country. In his consulting role, he supported major hydroponic produce growers AeroFarms and Bright Farms; Big Ag companies Dow AgroSciences, Novozymes and Indigo Ag; and several cannabis operations including Clade9. He wrote cultivation plans for cannabis licenses awarded in Missouri and West Virginia.
Rob’s protocols for optimizing greenhouse production have been downloaded over 70,000 times in 104 countries. He participated in the publication, A Practical Guide to Containment: Plant Biosafety in Research Greenhouses, recognized throughout the world as a primary resource for safe production of genetically modified crops. In 2016, he was a member of the International Committee for Controlled Environment Guidelines that published Guidelines for Measuring and Reporting Environmental Parameters for Experiments in Greenhouse Facilities, the seminal document of quality assurance protocols for plant science research.
In his free time, Rob enjoys gardening, growing microgreens under LEDs, baking and winning croquet matches against his three grown children.
Randy Lenz is the Senior Applications Engineer for Anden humidity control solutions including grow-optimized dehumidifiers and humidifiers. He is one of the original founders of Anden and is very passionate about the cannabis industry. Randy has 19 years of experience in controlling humidity for indoor environments, and has a great reputation of providing best-in-class customer service and technical support as well as a thorough understanding of the cannabis space. Randy likes to have one-on-one conversations with cultivators, no matter the day or time, to make sure they are getting the environmental control they need.
