Vertical farming, the practice of growing crops indoors in vertically stacked layers in a highly controlled environment, represents a solution to produce high-quality fresh vegetables anytime and anywhere, especially in urbanized areas where arable land is scarce. This comes at the cost of not benefitting from natural light. Artificial light results in high energy usage of VF associated costs and when fossil fuels are used in high emissions of carbon dioxide a key factor in climate change. Introducing green energy like solar panels, wind turbines or hydrogen batteries as alternative energy sources for VF is a sustainable solution. In this project, necessary preliminary research on these questions is conducted through developing a prototype of VF with a green energy system.

Research team
Phuong Nguyen (TU/e), Eldert van Henten (WUR), Congcong Sun (WUR), Frank Kempkes (WUR), Shihan Wang (UU)