Optimizing your light environment with Grow Zones

Research

Articles

helioCORE

By easily connecting your lights to our helioCORE software, you can take the guesswork out of advanced lighting. Our integrated lighting control system gives you consistent, high-quality crop production all year round.

helioCORE software also allows you to organize and optimize your light environment using grow zones. For example, you may want to divide your greenhouse into several growing zones based on compartments, microclimates or different types of crops. The drag-and-drop feature in our software makes this both quick and easy. And when things change, such as lights not being used at a certain time, it’s easy to reorganize the zones and turn off the lights.

Organize your light strategies by crop type or production stage.
Group multiple lights and create light zones to standardize schedules and settings.
Save and build custom libraries to use your time and staff hours more efficiently.

Customize your Grow Zone Strategy

The natural light may vary inside the greenhouse due to the movement of the sun over the day. This can lead to DLI also vary. The example below has 3 zones all set to DLI target 15. The lamps are controlled with one sensor placed in zone 1. Zone 1 hits its target of 15 DLI but zone 1 and 2 which has more natural light overshot by 7 and 12 %. Giving more light is not an issue in many cases, but at the same time more energy is used, so the power consumption is greater. By having individually controlled zones reduced energy use by 20 %.

An example of how zoning can be used to optimize your DLI lighting strategies in your greenhouse is to let the lights in the zones be controlled by separate sensors. Again, same example, but now with individually controlled zones. By controlling the zones separately one can optimize energy use and stabilize production.

Do you want to know more about DLI and how to optimize it? Download our free eBook
“Understanding the impact of Daily Light Integral”
and learn more today!