Optimal management of energy resources in greenhouse crop production systems

Samenvatting

The objective was to develop an optimization framework for minimizing the total energy consumption and energy costs of greenhouse horticulture in the Netherlands. A two-stage approach was proposed in order to minimize the energy consumption and costs of modern greenhouses. In the first stage, the grower defines desired trajectories for the greenhouse climate, i.e. the climate recipe. Then, optimal control techniques using models of the greenhouse climate physics, are used to calculate the demand for heating, cooling, and CO2. In the second stage, this energy demand serves as a reference, an optimal energy distribution of this demand over the various types of equipment was calculated using models of the technical infrastructure. The model-based two-stage approach was demonstrated for one test greenhouse. The potential energy and cost savings of dynamic optimization were successfully demonstrated for this test greenhouse. The results showed that optimization of the greenhouse energy system is feasible and beneficial.