Accelerate your ROI with water cooled LED with indoor cannabis

When planning to build or renovate an indoor cannabis facility you face a lot of different costs. One of them are the cost of artificial lighting. Because of the high light levels required this accounts for a significant amount of money. But these lights, however necessary, also cause another problem; heat. Therefore almost 20% of the installation cost for an indoor facility is seized by cooling (10% for greenhouse). Practically all of the heat caused by grow lights needs to be removed.

Sometimes, because of heat, maximum light intensity (and therefor grow results) that can be achieved is limited by the ability to get enough cool air to flow over the plants without disturbing or desiccate the plants. This appears to be very challenging to growers.

For example: an indoor growing facility wants to grow cannabis under a light level of 800 umol/s/m2. With a modern LED grow light of reasonable efficacy (3.3 umol/J), this will require approximately 240W electrical power per m2. 90W (37,5%) of this power is directly converted into heat. An air-cooled fixture uses the ambient air to cool itself and therefor instantly increases the temperature in the room. As a result, the 90W/m2 heat load stays in the room and needs to be cooled by HVAC. When using Oreon's water cooled LED solution, the heat of the fixture is immediately removed from the room without disturbing the plants.

Besides the above-mentioned heat energy, it is important to realize that also the 150W/m2 light energy will eventually convert into heat, either inside the plant through absorption and respiration or absorption in the floor or walls. Therefor the heat load in the room will increase with 60%.

Using the water cooled solution will significantly save on initial (HVAC) costs and more importantly: the yearly running cost of cooling. The result is that you save approximately 60% capacity of your cooling installation. Besides that, it increases your possibilities in optimizing light levels without overheating the plants.

In addition, the leds and electrical components inside the fixtures, are continuously cooled, which ensures a consistent light output and improves the lifespan of fixture and (L90B5 50,000h).

These aspects must all be considered when choosing a lighting installation. Therefore, when comparing (quality equal) lighting solutions, you should always compare the total cost of ownership (both investment and running cost) of each alternative.

Curious how much you can save to accelerate your ROI? Click here to read the calculation sample with an estimation of the reduction of cooling cost (both Capex and Opex) because of the water-cooling.