Thermal blanket helps lower greenhouse energy costs
Farmers are looking at many different solutions for dealing with rising energy costs. For one greenhouse grower, the answer lies with a new technology, a thermal blanket installation, which is expected to lower his
Thermal blanket helps lower greenhouse energy costs
Farmers are looking at many different solutions for dealing with rising energy costs. For one greenhouse grower, the answer lies with a new technology, a thermal blanket installation, which is expected to lower his energy costs by about one-third.
Gerard Schouwenaar of Orchard Park Growers, a St. Catharines-area flower producer, retrofitted a 30,000 sq ft greenhouse in the fall of 2009 with the technology—also called a thermal curtain—as a
way of combating rising energy costs and he’s very satisfied with the results.
“We’re anticipating annual savings in our heating and energy costs of about 30 per cent due to the installation of this curtain,” he says. “It’s not been quite a year yet, but we’re definitely on track to meet that target.”
Greenhouses are high users of energy since they need to keep interior temperatures warm in the winter and cool in the summer. This can be a costly undertaking in a region like southern Ontario, where temperatures can easily fluctuate from below -20C in the winter to over 30C in the summer. In addition to reducing energy costs, this project will also save energy, which is a key priority under Ontario’s Green Energy Act, passed in 2009. Additional fringe benefits will include improved productivity and reduced emissions. (You can see Gerard inside the greenhouse with the curtain installed at left).
The thermal curtain is a fabric cloth with aluminum foil woven through it that reflects the sun. In a greenhouse, it can be installed truss to truss or gutter to gutter. It is kept closed at night to retain the heat inside the greenhouse and keep the cold out in winter; in the summer months it is kept closed during the day to provide shading and keep the interior temperature of the greenhouse cooler to improve crop growth.
Schouwenaar’s system is tied to two different climate zones in the greenhouse, but controlled centrally through a single point. The curtain is connected to the computer that controls the environment inside the greenhouses. This computer considers variables such as the type of plants being grown, time, temperature and the amount of light that comes in, and automatically determines when the curtain needs to be opened and closed for optimum results.
Schouwenaar installed the technology into a greenhouse that he had originally built about four years ago to grow crops that needed cooler temperatures. Now he grows primarily potted gerberas and works on plant propagation in this zone, both of which need higher temperatures in the winter to flourish.
Looking for a way to keep his energy costs under control, he turned to the a href=”http://www.ontariosoilcrop.org/en/greenbeltgreenenergyprogram.htm”>Greenbelt Green Energy Program for Agriculture (GGEPA) program and the Canada-Ontario Farm Stewardship Program (COFSP) to help fund his environmentally friendly retrofit.
GGEPA, a program funded by the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation and administered by the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association, provides cost-share funding for farmers to implement best management practices that involve energy conservation and green energy generation. Funding