Integrating artificial intelligence into current environmental control systems could reduce energy consumption for indoor agriculture by 25% – and potentially help feed the world as the population increases, engineers at Cornell University have found.
The research published in Natural food.
According to the United Nations, the world’s population is expected to grow to 9.7 billion people by 2050. This growth, combined with climate change and urbanization, will require solutions to the shortcomings in the world’s current food production systems, the researchers said.
Indoor farming methods, such as plant factories with artificial lighting, are less vulnerable to climate change, but they are energy intensive and require careful resource management to be sustainable.
“Existing environmental control systems are not smart enough,” said Fengqi You, professor of energy systems engineering at Cornell.
Using AI techniques such as deep learning and computational optimization, the scientists analyzed lettuce grown in indoor farming facilities in eight different locations: Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Fargo, North Dakota and Ithaca, New York. the US – as well as Reykjavík, Iceland and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
AI reduces energy consumption by optimizing lighting and climate control systems. Energy consumption decreased from 9.5 kilowatt hours per kilogram of fresh weight to 6.42 kilowatt hours per kilogram of fresh weight (the energy required or used to produce one kilogram of indoor lettuce) in places where non-AI technology is used. The researchers found that for warmer areas, such as Dubai or the southern US, AI reduced energy consumption from 10.5 kilowatt hours per kilogram of fresh weight to 7.26 kilowatt hours per kilogram of fresh weight.
Low ventilation during light periods (16 hours of simulated sunlight) and high ventilation during dark periods (eight hours simulating night) provided an energy-efficient solution for optimal indoor carbon dioxide levels for photosynthesis, oxygen for respiration and plant growth, and balancing other ventilation requirements.
“This is a concept very similar to smart homes,” you said. “We want to be comfortable at home and at the same time reduce energy consumption; this also applies to crops. This work focuses on a smart system to make food production optimal and sustainable and to reduce the CO2 footprint. That’s what AI does very well. We can save quite a bit if we use AI to carefully optimize artificial lighting and other energy systems.”
Financial support for this research was provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (National Institute of Food and Agriculture); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; and the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship (Cornell).
