How to obtain an accurate and practical horticulture lighting plan from a supplier?

As a grower, perhaps you own a tent that is several square feet (square meters); or you have built a grow room of hundreds of square feet which you are proud of; or you are the manager of a greenhouse of thousands of square feet. Everyone wants to operate the horticulture lighting system in the most precise way to get the highest return on investment.

This requires that before we purchase and install horticulture lights, we should plan our grow area and make a targeted lighting plan to efficiently achieve our objective while minimizing investment. As most of growers, we do not have a background of professional lighting technology knowledge, and it is impossible to learn professional lighting design software in a short time. More importantly, we do not have professional optical materials and data of the horticulture lights. Therefore, we need to ask help from the light suppliers on our layout, and even to design the cultivating area for our blank space.

• Will the suppliers provide it for free and why?

Calculating and designing a lighting plan requires a number of professional engineers to cooperate with biologist experts and horticulture experts to analyze the actual needs of grower. Using commercial-grade professional software to simulate the actual cultivation situation. Then input technical data of the lights, combined with the cultivating target, design an overall plan, and accurately convert the engineering file into a proposal that is understandable for customers.

Therefore, the production of a lighting plan requires a lot of manpower and resource investment. In other words, an accurate and practical lighting program is of high value.

Will the supplier of lighting products provide this service for free? In the current in the market, some companies will, and some companies will still charge fees for it. This does not mean that the free providers have lower cost. In the context of the market, the managements decide to consider this as a valuable service to benefit customers and help customers make more accurate and easier choices.

• What information and data should growers prepare in the first place? What requirements we should specify?

In order to obtain the lighting plan quickly and more accurately, the grower should prepare the following content:

(1) Information of the grow facilities. Including tents, indoor cultivation, vertical racks, or greenhouses. Whether the greenhouse use daylight throughout the day or using a black shade.

(2) Location. This is very important for greenhouse cultivation. When calculating the supplemental light DLI or light intensity, if the local average daylight conditions are optimally considered, more accurate results will be generated;

(3) Crops. Which growth stage will the lights to be applied for? High-wire tomatoes and basil cultivating on shelves will not use the same lighting method. Similarly, the cloning process and flowering stage of hemp will also require very different light intensity and spectrum.

(4) Area. Take the greenhouse as an example. It is not enough to just provide length and width. Lighting producers also need to know whether there are rows and benches of the grow areas, and what is the distance between each rows? In addition, the height of the crossbeams is important when decide suspension height of the lights.

(5) Are there any special requirements for spectrum? To increase the smell of plants the secondary metabolites, UV light needs to be added. By increasing far-red light to guidance, the plant flowering.

• How to determine whether the supplier's lighting plan is professional?

Is the lighting solution provided by the supplier professional? Can it solve your difficulties and met your growing objective? You can analyze from the following points:

(1) Whether the parameter unit used is for plants. For plants, you need to use PPF instead of Lumen, and plants use PPFD instead of lux which for human;

(2) Roughly judge from the power and PPF output of the recommended product. The light itself should be a high-efficiency product.

(3) In addition to providing the average PPFD in the lighting scheme, there should also be a spatial photosynthetic photon flux density distribution map. To check the uniformity of lighting distribution.

(4) The PPFD value is marked with the distance from the light to the plant canopy.

(5) The PPFD should meet the target plants growth requirement.

(6) Some other important information including: Heat dissipation data, installation guide, etc.

• How should growers use the lighting plan?

First, it is necessary to roughly judge if the lighting plan meets the needs of the grow stage. Such as PAR value, power, spectrum, etc.;

Then, check if the size of the light fixture is be carefully confirmed, see whether it can be installed on your grow rack, whether the length and width are appropriate; whether the thickness of the lamp is appropriate, etc.;

Whether the suspension height of greenhouse lights can be applied in actual scenes, etc.

• If growers request on HarveLite, what will they do (what supports will be provided)?

From the very beginning, unlike some other brands that consider the products as the basis to design the solution, HarveLite's engineering team will first comprehensively consider the demand of customers, and on the first place provide customers with the lighting solution that needed by their actual cultivating activity. Tell the growers whether their high-wire tomatoes need inter lighting; what PPFD standards need to be met during the growth stage, etc. Then recommend the most suitable product to the customer, and describe in detail how the product is applied in the plan to help growers get the best harvest. Therefore, HarveLite's lighting plan is not a product sales book, but a file that can provide growers with planting knowledge and long-term reference value.

Thanks for reading. I'm Charlie Yang, and my objective is to "Bring true value to the market." 

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