"Even if you grow the best weed in the world, there's still competition, and prices are being pressured downward. So, we knew that the only way to make an impact on our revenue and help survive in this crazy space was to increase yield," said Dave Holmes from Clade9, an indoor cannabis facility in Los Angeles.
In the video below, the craft grower guides us through his facility, where several rooms have been retrofitted with Fluence LEDs. The first part of the tour is the propagation room, which Dave describes as the most important room in the building. The racks where the plantlets are placed are equipped with Fluence Razor lights—three bars on the top rack and two bars below. As soon as the young plants acclimate, they remove the domes and increase the lighting.
The next step in the cannabis plant's journey is, of course, the veg room. The company carries out two stages of veg. Dave shows how one side of the room is empty as new plants are coming in. They will be crammed together there for one week, and then moved to the other part of the room where they'll be spread out and allowed to grow before entering the flowering room. Here too, Clade9 is using all Fluence fixtures, with the company assisting in the lighting layout. "I'm not an engineer, but I want someone with engineering knowledge doing the lighting layout," he explains.
The flower room, shown next, is 4-5 days away from harvest, and Clade9 employees are busy with the final touches, such as pruning. In this room, the company replaced HPS with LEDs, noting how the switch increased both the number of flowers and flower density. When they first started using Fluence LEDs, they saw a 100-pound increase in yield, which convinced them to take their LED game to the next level with the goal of retrofitting the entire facility.
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