Home / Uses / Glasshouse controls and fans through a cold outage
A glasshouse of tomatoes or cucumbers can be lost to one frosty night without heat. Most heating runs on gas or biomass, but it still needs electricity to move the warmth around.
In a typical heated glasshouse, a boiler warms water that circulates through pipe rails, and pumps keep it moving. A climate computer reads sensors and opens or closes roof vents, runs circulation fans, switches CO2 dosing and sets thermal screens. Every one of those is electrical, even if the heat itself comes from gas or wood chip. Lose power on a clear winter night and the circulation pumps stop. The boiler may shut down on safety, the pipes cool, and the crop starts dropping toward damage.
The hybrid inverter runs in UPS mode, so the climate computer, boiler controls and pumps do not reset when the grid drops. The 30 to 40 kWh battery handles the first moments, and the fuel cell runs from hydrogen made on off-peak power and stored at 30 bar or less. Night-rate power is cheapest exactly when glasshouses are quietest, which suits charging well.
How it works →
Pumps, controls, vent motors and fans in a small to medium glasshouse fit within 15 kW continuous. The heat itself does not: electric heating of a glasshouse is a very large load, and making it from hydrogen at 30% or less round-trip efficiency would be wasteful. Large commercial glasshouse ranges with grow lights and many hectares under glass would need a larger or multi-unit setup sized in the pilot, or are beyond what this system is designed for.
Not realistically. Heating a glasshouse electrically takes far more than 15 kW, and hydrogen round-trip is 30% or less. The system is designed to keep your existing gas or biomass heating working by powering its pumps and controls.
Grow lights across a commercial house are a large load and usually exceed 15 kW. A small propagation area with a few lights could fit. The pilot would look at the actual lighting load before suggesting anything.
With instant switch-over, the climate computer keeps control and the vents keep responding as usual. That is better than relying on vents failing in one position, which may not be the right one for the weather.
Pilot installs go to people on this list first. Rural homes, farms and remote sites especially. No spam, no payment.