Cannabtimes

<![CDATA[Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the November 2020 State of the Lighting Market, produced by Cannabis Business Times and made possible with support from Fluence by OSRAM. Read the full report in the November issue of CBT. As chief scientist for LivWell, Andrew Alfred’s priorities include testing any potential facility update or growing change before implementing it at scale.For the past seven years, one of the inputs Alfred has researched extensively is lighting. Alfred was interested specifically in light-emitting diode (LED) technology for its energy-saving potential, but before considering a widespread change for the vertically integrated company’s 2-acre canopy in its flagship cultivation facility in Denver, he wanted to be sure plant performance wouldn’t suffer.“Seven years ago, one of the LEDs that we had in our flower rooms looked like a car engine. It weighed 80 pounds,” Alfred says. “We didn’t know how to use the LED light. We didn’t know that you had to raise the temperatures in your room to account for the loss of radiant heat.”Another common mistake cultivators made in the early days was simply swapping out one grow light for an LED light without calculating lighting density, which was “a growing pain that the industry had to reconcile.”However, both LED technology and cultivator knowledge have improved dramatically and quickly, Alfred says, and that includes everything from the lights to the mounting hardware. Working with nearly 20 North American and European LED lighting manufacturers, LivWell has conducted multiple cannabis trials over the years, adjusting environmental conditions to optimize plant performance.Because of the improvements in yield and energy savings, for the past five years, the company has been incrementally converting its entire Denver facility to LED lighting and has almost completed the transition.Here, Alfred shares some key takeaways he’s learned and tips for cultivators who are…

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Source : Cannabis Cultivation Lighting Retrofit: 7 Tips

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