Inside Urban Green

LED Lighting News From AeroFarms

Photo via www.aerofarms.com

Having lived and worked in a field for so many years where light is clearly the limiting factor, it is exciting to read about the emerging technology of LED plant lighting. It feels like the dawn of a another dimension of the digital age of urban greenscaping. 

It is a pleasure to see this work moving forward here in my home state of New York. I believe it is particularly important that the information is coming from a consumer, albeit a commercial consumer, rather than a supplier.

As AeroFarms has discovered, there are many wild and unsubstantiated claims being made about LEDs, particularly by hydroponics suppliers. It is important research and I hope it leads to much future success for them. 

Recently we announced the installation of our one-of-a-kind LED testing array. Our press release provides a good overview of the importance of this equipment, but we thought we would dive into some of the deeper technical details in our blog today.

CREE: Lighting the LED Revolution Video

Even LED lighting won't help that Majesty palm in the corner. Don't buy them. Doomed to die! If you have sweaty palms for a palm, buy a Kentia or Rhapis palm instead. Grow it in a sub-irrigated planter (SIP) with adequate light and it will be with you for a lifetime.

Watch the video for some smiles. Cree: Lighting the LED Revolution

Sonnylight LED Kitchen Garden

Here is a kitchen garden with LED lighting but without the aeroponics a la the AeroGarden. I like the LED lighting but not the price. I'm sure this is a peek into the future with many more plant appliances like this to come.

via www.sonnylightled.com

Anyone can have a green thumb with our LED Kitchen Garden.

Smell the organic soil, germinate heirloom seeds and grow green, natural herbs and plants with our revolutionary LED grow light source. Grow plants faster while using less energy. All season gardening at your finger tips.

Lettuce LED!

A visitor compares an eco-friendly LED lamp, bottom, and two other ordinary lamps at the booth of Toshiba Corp., during the 11th Eco-Products 2009, Eco Style Fair, in Tokyo. AP Photo

LED lamps similar to these will be growing lettuce and a lot more in the not too distant future.

Lettuce Into Your Living Quarters!

Visitors look at the hydroculture lettuce and herbs grown only by LED lamps at a booth of Japanese company Synergytec during the Eco-Products 2009, Eco Style Fair, in Tokyo, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama) Editorial note: I searched but could not find a website for Synergytec and this system.

This setup is so cool. AP captioned the system as hydroculture (a passive method) when in fact it is more accurately a hydroponic system. However, that's beside the point. The significance of this photo for me is that it is set up on an InterMetro type rack just like the racks in the CuGreen plant lab.

A big difference is that the lighting is LED while mine is ordinary fluorescent. Fluorescent lighting is adequate for growing and maintaining most indoor plants (i.e. houseplants) but not for growing vegetables. This is a peek into the future of urban greenscaping in city apartments and homes. Bravo!

via armoks.com

Visitors look at the hydroculture lettuce and herbs grown only by LED lamps at a booth of Japanese company Synergytec during the Eco-Products 2009, Eco Style Fair, in Tokyo,

Indoor Plant Lighting: Help is on the Way

The future for urban greenscaping and plants inside buildings is certainly brighter with the advent of LED lighting. Now if we can just overcome our dumb drain hole fetish.

Due primarily to the massive amount of misinformation and intentional propaganda about clay pots and drain holes, it is likely that LED lighting will be in the mainstream long before houseplant modernity. One can only hope that science will eventually overcome misguided intuition.

via www.nytimes.com

The study results show that over the entire life of the bulb — from manufacturing to disposal — the energy used for incandescent bulbs is almost five times that used for compact fluorescents and LED lamps.

The energy used during the manufacturing phase of all lamps is insignificant — less than 2 percent of the total. Given that both compact fluorescents and LEDs use about 20 percent of the electricity needed to create the same amount of light as a standard incandescent, both lighting technologies put incandescents to shame.

Dr. Wessler expects the results to shift even more in favor of LEDs, as newer generations of that technology become even more efficient, requiring less energy to produce the same amount of light.

“Everything I’ve seen strengthens the assumption that LED efficiency will increase,” she said. “There has not been much improvement in incandescent efficiency in the last 10 years.”

LEDs Magazine - Plant growth gets the red light from Showa Denko

Are we going to lag behind in this technology too? Read Tom Friedman's "Have a Nice Day" column about Applied Materials and their overseas solar panel factories. There is no doubt that we will be growing vegetables in SIPs (sub-irrigated planters aka "self-watering") under LEDs in the future. The big question is who is going to make them?

via www.ledsmagazine.com

Plant growth gets the red light from Showa Denko

The Japanese LED maker has developed high-performance 660 nm chips that accelerate plant photosynthesis.

Showa Denko K.K., a Japan-based LED maker, has started selling samples of AlGaInP (aluminum gallium indium phosphide) LED chips that emit red light with wavelength of 660 nm. This, says the company, is the optimum light for accelerating the growth of plants.

Red light stimulates plants

Showa Denko has developed a new light-emitting layer and claims to have achieved an output of 11 mW at the drive current of 20 mA, which is believes to the world’s highest level for 660-nm LED chips to date.

In recent years, there has been widespread investigation of the growth of vegetables under conditions where various aspects of the environment are controlled, such as lighting, temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration and nourishment.

Nearly 30 facilities of this kind are already in operation in Japan. They ensure stabilized production regardless of season or location; they allow multiple harvests; and they do not need fungicides or insecticides because of the controlled environment. Read more...

LED Street Lighting in the News

An article about LED lighting titled Green Promise Seen in Switch to LED Lighting made the front page above the fold in the New York Times. 

There are still questions to be answered and problems to be solved but it appears that LED residential lighting is in our future. That is good news for the future of urban greenscaping.  

Studies suggest that a complete conversion to the lights could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use for lighting by up to 50 percent in just over 20 years; in the United States, lighting accounts for about 6 percent of all energy use. 

A recent report by McKinsey & Company cited conversion to LED lighting as potentially the most cost effective of a number of simple approaches to tackling global warming using existing technology. Read more...

Card LED Desk Lamp From Toshiba Lighting Systems

Here is yet another cool looking LED desk lamp from Toshiba Lighting Systems. It looks like it could easily help you keep a living plant on your desk while lighting your work. Note that it folds flat. The lamp was displayed at the recent Milan Design Week. 

I will attend LIGHTFAIR International here in New York City on May 5-7 with camera in hand. Stay tuned for future posts about the latest in LED and OLED lighting. 

Via: designboom (more photos)

LED Lighting at Go Green Expo NYC

These LED lamps were in the LED Living Technologies booth at the Go Green Expo in New York City. This was my first encounter with LED lights of this type up close and personal. It was most impressive to measure the light output of these lamps. High light output at low energy cost creates exciting possibilities for both edible and decorative plant lighting. 

For example, the lamp in the upper left is a four-foot strip that emulates a fluorescent tube lamp. I believe it produces enough light to grow tomatoes indoors. It would be interesting to grow a staked tomato vine next to this lamp mounted vertically. 

I would grow the plant in a sub-irrigated planter mounted on a rotating pedestal for even light distribution. 

Seeing these lights reinforces my belief that this is the dawn of a new era in indoor plant growing and maintenance. What awesome potential LED lighting offers for new vistas in urban greenscaping.