Welcome to the Greenhouse Energy Guide
- Servicedesk Groenkennisnet.nl
- Tessa Jacobs
- Arie van der Graaf
Introduction
The requirements for greenhouse systems are constantly evolving, but in recent years things have been going fast, due to economic changes and political choices, but also due to new techniques, information technology, autonomous cultivation, AR and AI. Preconditions change due to new political requirements in the field of fossil- and emission-free and climate-neutral cultivation in the Netherlands and Europe, due to changing energy prices, installation costs and availability of raw materials.
Sustainable, climate neutral and fossil free greenhouses will be required in the near future and more and more energy saving options are becoming economically viable for growers. Of course, under the conditions that the options applied are feasible and for this suppliers must offer a tailor made product package to their customers and advise them on base of solid data.
Within the Greenhouse Energy Guide project (Dutch: de Kas Energiewijzer), this knowledge platform (wiki) with the same name is developed and contains information about practical solutions for renewable energy sources and smart installations, with the goal to go to a climate-neutral cultivation. Greenhouse Energy Guide contains a roadmap with sensible options and technical-economic considerations for growers and the supplying industry. This can be a collection of existing techniques or novel techniques all applied in an integrated solution.
The wiki describes for all relevant aspects of greenhouse horticulture the contribution to the energy household and resource use of a greenhouses and the possible steps towards sustainable, fossil-free greenhouses. This starts with the big picture of the global climate agreement and the energy transition in
Europe and the Netherlands, including the impact for Dutch suppliers and horticultural entrepreneurs when they consider to invest in new greenhouse equipment and technology. Scenarios can be studied for different geographical locations, different greenhouse types and covering materials. Next the different technical solutions and devices which are commonly used in modern greenhouses are described. Currently this equipment is mostly powered by fossil energy, which means that alternatives will have to be applied when going towards fossil-free greenhouses. For energy commodities there are renewable sources and some adaptations on greenhouse equipment affects the water consumption as well. Therefore, the Greenhouse Energy Guide also keeps track of water use.
As an illustration, some detailed scenarios towards fossil free greenhouses are described and quantified. Finally, the possible and most promising roadmaps are presented.
Simulation tool
The Greenhouse Energy Guide comes also with an interactive simulation tool which enables users to recalculate scenarios from the roadmap for changed assumptions on economical parameters or to explore the perspective of sustainable techniques for other geographical locations than the ones shown in this wiki. The tool consists of a menu with a wide range of technical solutions for designing a sustainable, climate neutral and fossil free greenhouses in order to study their technical and economical viability in dependence of local conditions.
The tool provides most information when alternative options are compared to a reference. The reference greenhouse is defined in terms of the greenhouse type (glass, foil, naturally ventilated or mechanically cooled) and heating and cooling equipment (combined heat and power, mechanical cooling, forced ventilation, active dehumidification, fogging, pad & fan). Screens and artificial illumination equipment of different types are available.
The available sustainable energy systems include heat pumps (with or without aquifer), geothermal energy, biomass, wind turbines, and solar panels. Also the added value of batteries can be studied.
The simulation tool can be found here.
A user manual of the tool can be found here.
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