Optimizing Commercial Cannabis Energy Efficiency With Automation

Commercial cannabis cultivation requires an enormous amount of energy. With increasing energy prices, growing competition, and ever-tightening regulations on the horizon, cultivators need to optimize energy efficiency to maintain market share and maximize profits. 

In commercial cannabis, energy efficiency affects more than just growers themselves. Improved efficiency reduces stress on local electrical grids, reduces carbon emissions, and minimizes environmental impact. Smart, efficiency-focused automation is the best way to achieve these benefits and meet sustainability goals. 

Commercial Cannabis: Energy Efficiency Through Automation

Smart farming harnesses the power of smart technology to monitor and modulate environmental variables affecting crop cultivation. For cannabis growers, investing in the right tech stack opens up tremendous new automation opportunities.

Key areas for automation include:

• Carbon dioxide concentrations
• Lighting intensity and color
• Moisture in soil 
• Relative humidity levels
• Temperature ranges
• Vapor pressure deficit (VPD)

Automation allows cannabis farmers to adjust conditions with extraordinary precision, improving both crop yield and quality. For example, with indoor cannabis cultivation, maintaining a cool environment with low relative humidity is a challenge, as heat from artificial lighting increases temperatures and allows the air to hold more water. Excessive moisture in the air leads to mildew or powdery mold developing on plants, a significant danger that can spell disaster for crops. Data-driven automation of HVAC systems and other climate control equipment helps regulate these conditions, creating environments that optimize plant health and minimize the risk of crop failure.

Automation also allows cannabis growers to adapt faster to changing circumstances, whether in a facility’s environmental conditions, regulatory requirements, or the global cannabis market. However, perhaps the greatest benefit of automation is energy efficiency.

Optimizing Energy Efficiency

Within commercial cannabis facilities, successful automation systems are the result of careful planning that brings together disparate technologies that work together to achieve optimal results. At the center of these systems are IoT sensors that gather data and an intelligent building management platform (IBMP) that turns that data into meaning. The IBMP produces insights based on real-time and historical data, recommends operational improvements, and allows for sophisticated automation to achieve specific goals. This includes identifying, correcting, and preventing energy waste without compromising crop health. 

Because an IBMP continuously monitors energy use, anomalies can be detected as soon as they occur and long before they have a significant impact on operational costs. It can also:

• Correlate energy consumption with equipment and environmental variables
• Identify opportunities for improvement
• Track progress toward energy goals
• Verify fixes

Ultimately, the right IBMP gives you greater understanding of and control over how, when, and why energy is used so you can make better decisions about your cannabis operation.

Expert Energy Management

For growers of commercial cannabis, energy efficiency can mean the difference between profit and loss. Partnering with a smart buildings expert, like Buildings IOT, for energy management is the best way to ensure your operation is as efficient as possible.

Building IOT offers cannabis cultivators a full range of products and services, including: 

Our teams work with you to understand your needs and create innovative, flexible, and secure solutions that work for you. We’ll show you how to truly make the most of your facility and reap the benefits of efficiency-focused automation.

Buildings IOT offers the state-of-the-art services and products commercial cannabis cultivators need to optimize energy efficiency. Contact our team of experts to learn more about what we can do for you.