Lemnis water-cooled NGL: lighting without unwanted heat

Lemniscella Oreon, founded in 2008, was one of the first companies to study the theoretical and practical potential of LED lighting in the greenhouse. Today, Lemnis offers two ways: 90% red / 10% blue and 95% red / 5% blue. Gert Grolleman, Lemnis: "Users of the lamps are excited. They saw that plants respond well to the light within a short time. In addition, our NGL is at least 25% more efficient at converting electricity into usable light for plants."

The NGL is a water-cooled lamp. The heat released from the NGL is vented by a (water) pipe system outside the greenhouse. This creates little extra heat in the greenhouse and gives the grower an opportunity to increase the light level without the plant 'succumbing' to high temperatures. "In particular, crops that require a lot of light, such as tomatoes, may benefit from this," continues Gert. "Even in areas where lighting wasn’t possible before."

This solution also creates the possibility to utilize the residual heat of the lamp. Koppert Cress has chosen to link the LED system to a hot and cold storage. In summer the heat is stored in an underground reservoir, and in the winter the heat is extracted and used to heat offices and processing areas.

The investment in this new lighting system is constructive. Because the fixtures are efficient and do not need to be installed, the payback period is drastically shortened. Gert Grolleman has already had many requests from abroad, while the product only just hit the market.