IntelliGrow 2

Since 1996 a dynamic model based climate control concept (IntelliGrow) has been developed in Denmark. The aim of the system is to adjust the greenhouse climate dynamic, so that the natural resources are used as optimal as possible. The concept has been proved to work in both growth chamber and greenhouse experiments, with many different species of pot plants, resulting in energy savings up to 40%, depending on the outside climate. Based on the former work a new system (IntelliGrow 2.0) is being developed which offers an improved user interface and an extensible component model. The goal is to test the system in full scale in five Danish commercial nurseries. The four steps to reach the goal are: 1) development of a demonstrator giving the grower advice on optimal climate control based on the IntelliGrow concept 2) testing the demonstrator at research facilities followed by tests at growers 3) development of an active climate control system that will take full control of the greenhouse climate based on the overall goals set by the grower 4) tests of the active climate control system at research facilities and at the growers. It will be possible to adjust the control by adding new components. A special emphasis will be on components that utilize local weather predictions for energy saving purposes and timing of production as well as components with photosynthesis based strategies for use of artificial light. We expect that the extension of intelligent climate control will result in better production management and resource utilization. A fast flow of knowledge from research to practice in the future will be established. Design of the concept and the first results are presented in this paper. INTRODUCTION The greenhouse industry is a high energy demanding industry. Aaslyng et al. (2003) previously described the IntelliGrow system. IntelliGrow incorporate models for absorption of irradiance, leaf photosynthesis and respiration. It optimizes the climate by determining heating and CO2 set points to ensure maximum net dry matter production, taking the use of non-natural energy into consideration. While the IntelliGrow was designed for research, this article outlines some requirements needed to build a new system suitable for use in commercial greenhouse production. Results from previous work can be found in Lund et al. (2006) and Ottosen et al. (2005). The overall idea is to design a system that can control the greenhouse climate so that heat, light and CO2 are optimized according to photosynthesis, with the aim of 507 Proc. IS on Greensys2007 Eds.:S. De Pascale et al. Acta Hort. 801, ISHS 2008 minimizing use of resources and keeping to production schedule. Strategy Based on the existing IntelliGrow concept a new software is being developed (IntelliGrow 2.0) to be used by growers. First a demonstrator is developed that will show the grower how IntelliGrow operates. It will suggest new climate settings to the grower and provide reasons why the new settings are suggested. The grower can then choose to accept or reject the new settings. The demonstrator will be tested initially at research facilities and then at grower’s sites. The test will naturally result in improvements of the system. The upgraded system will allow controlling the greenhouse climate actively based on individual models and limits set by the grower. The active climate control system will be subjected to similar testing at research facilities before tests are performed by the growers. System Construction The new system is composed of four main elements: communication, decisionmaking, data storage and presentation components (Fig. 1.). The communication component is responsible for continuous exchange of data with climate computers, controlling the climate individually for all compartments. We hope to develop a generic system to be able to support different climate computers. In this project we aim to support two climate computers produced by Senmatic A/S: LCC1200 and LCC-Completa. In order to unify the communication process, we have decided to utilize SuperLink4 application made by Senmatic A/S as the intermediary layer between IntelliGrow 2.0 and the climate computers. The data storage component receives important data from other parts of the system and saves it to a database for further analysis. The following information will be stored: • Current climate conditions in all compartments, • Current outside weather conditions, • Weather forecast for next 5 days, updated every 12 hours, • Set points for all climate computers, • Planned control decisions and their reasons. The new system will be designed in components, as described by Aaslyng et al., 2003, with a hierarchically arranged decision making component. The decision-making component will calculate the climate values such as set points for temperature and CO2 concentrations depending on other climate control components like the boundary component. The boundary component handles climate control restrictions that for example ensure that the correct night length and minimum and maximum temperature are obtained. The focus of the presentation component is mainly on informative and explanatory descriptions of all actions made by the system in order to reach the grower’s goals. This will help the user to understand the control process and to adjust it if necessary. This will also significantly increase user’s level of trust to the system, which is a key issue, if one wants to implement a more automated climate control system. The presentation component provides features for visualization, in form of graphs over a time, of parameters like: climate conditions, weather forecast, estimated energy consumption and estimated photosynthesis. Another aim of the project is to develop an interdisciplinary network for fast flow of knowledge from research to practice. As partners include growers, one climate control computer company, one weather prediction service agency, consultants and researchers they might have different aims. Growers’ interests are to produce plants of high quality that can be sold, while researchers might want to reach the limits of possible reduction of resources and maybe to reach the limits concerning climate extremes possible for producing quality plants. The commercial companies might want to keep the knowledge gained during the process to their own, while researchers are obliged to publish. This