Optimizing greenhouse efficiency with digital twins

Added on 30 May 2024

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Optimizing greenhouse efficiency with digital twins

In the realm of building management, the digital twin technology has emerged as a groundbreaking force, reshaping traditional methods of energy management and resource allocation. Now, its transformative potential is expanding also to the greenhouse industry, already realizing significant energy cost savings.

At its core, a Digital Twin is a virtual replica of a physical system or process, which is continuously updated and trained with real-time data from sensors and other sources. Digital Twins offer the possibility to test the impact of different scenarios to define the one with the best outcomes before putting it into practice.

What does a Digital Twin of a greenhouse look like?

In the context of greenhouse energy cost optimization, the Digital Twin contains all the knowledge of a greenhouse and energy installation, including energy contracts (e.g. capacities and configurations of gas boilers, e-boilers, heat pumps and buffers). Being integrated with the operational control of the climate computer, it also considers the location and characteristics of the greenhouse, its light consumption, energy screen usage and weather forecasts. This makes the Digital Twin very smart, without influencing the climate and crop strategies of the trusted process computer.

How does it work?

In practice, the digital twin technology used by Priva Energy Cost Optimizer (ECO) proactively purchases from the grid energy or heat when prices are low, storing it in a buffer to be used at a later moment.