How Trane can help indoor growers optimize operations and reduce energy costs

Indoor agriculture has a lot going for it: year-round growing cycles, the ability to create and maintain unique growing conditions, with less pesticide and more efficient use of water resources. But replicating Mother Nature indoors is a complex task that requires lots of energy.

Fundamentally, it’s an HVAC challenge. Like data centers and hospital operating rooms, commercial grow rooms are critical environments that require precise indoor climate conditions to successfully perform their mission. It’s important for growers to partner with a provider that is familiar with the challenges high-stakes environments face and has the energy-efficiency expertise to support them.

Tell us the ‘recipe’ and we’ll design an Indoor Agriculture HVAC system to grow it
Vertical farmers, indoor growers and commercial cannabis producers often have customized and proprietary growing processes, making manual system adjustments challenging or difficult. Trane can engineer a comprehensive HVAC and control system that operates based on the growth stage of the plant, automatically producing the environmental conditions necessary – with the specific lighting, temperature, humidity, CO2 levels and irrigation/fertigation requirements. This capability reduces labor costs and helps ensure consistent, repeatable grow cycles.

We’ll help you reduce energy consumption
Maintaining the ideal growing climate 24/7 means indoor growers quickly become super-users of energy, which can easily become a grower’s largest production expense. The growth of controlled environment agriculture (CEA) is highlighting the need to ensure indoor agriculture concerns operate as efficiently as possible. From energy-efficient LED grow lights, to control systems that automate processes and scheduling strategies to reduce energy consumption and cost, Trane can help you intelligently manage your energy costs while maintaining your production capacity and quality.

Select from a broad spectrum of solutions tailored to your growing operation
It’s not a one-size-fits-all choice. Trane engineers help you to determine the best fit for your needs, with a broad selection of HVAC system components designed to support indoor agricultural applications, including:

• Purpose-built systems, such as Trane Horizon® Thrive™, a packaged rooftop system specifically engineered to meet the requirements of indoor agriculture operations, with capacities of 3-80 tons so it can scale up as operations require;
• Conventional direct expansion (DX) equipment, including packaged rooftop units, DX split systems and VRF systems;
• Air handling units for cool and reheat applications, and
• Chilled water systems, including air-cooled, water-cooled and modular air- and water-cooled systems.

Help you use data and analytics to further optimize your operation
Sophisticated processes generate lots of data, which can be used to optimize and improve the operation. With the Tracer® Ensemble® Building Management System, growers have everything at their fingertips, with 24-hour, secure remote access. Monitor, troubleshoot and optimize operations from a phone, tablet or computer. See one or multiple operations, and leverage data for greater insights into performance and improvement opportunities.