Skyrocketing energy costs hasten strawberry grower's switch to LED

With energy prices soaring, a year-round Dutch strawberry grower has wasted no time deciding that its first voyage into LED lighting merits more of the same.

Kwekerij Loos plans this September to replace all high-pressure sodium (HPS) lights in two greenhouses — one at its home base in Moerstraten and the other in nearby Lepelstraat — covering about 4 hectares, and bringing its total LED lighting area to 6 hectares.

The company will install a combination of LED toplights and LED flowering lights from Signify, the same supplier it tapped last year when it replaced about half the HPS lights at the Moerstraten location with LEDs over 2.1 hectares.

"With the current energy prices, you start looking at how you can make your cultivation practices as efficient as possible," said co-owner Arno Loos. "You'll quickly discover that LED lighting is the best solution."

Loos anticipates energy savings of around 40% compared to energy consumption with the HPS lights.

"If current energy prices persist, which is of course not to be hoped for, we can recoup our investment in three to four years," he noted. Neither Loos nor Signify revealed how much Loos is paying for the lights, or how many he is purchasing.

The parties said that in total Kwekerij Loos will use the same number of lights as it has been with HPS, but it will raise lighting levels from 195 to 220 ľmol/m².

"We anticipate an increase in production, but how much remains to be seen," Loos said.

The lights appear to include Signify's new "FR" strawberry-specific toplights, which deliver a recipe that includes far red.

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Photo Courtesy of Signify

Source: LEDs Magazine