Executive Summary
The CalNEXT ET23SWE0067 Smart Controls for Data-Driven Indoor Agriculture Field Evaluation project, conducted from 2023 to 2025, explored the market potential for and evaluated the impact of “smart controls” technologies on controlled environment agriculture (CEA). This method of agriculture involves the cultivation and manufacturing of floriculture, food, and cannabis products. The study focused on automated, integrated, and intelligent environmental controls technologies used in indoor and greenhouse CEA facilities in California. Smart controls monitor, evaluate, and control energy consumption of the facility’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning; lighting; crop irrigation; and nutrient management systems.
The project investigated smart CEA controls, which must be capable of one or more of the following functions:
• Automation: Hardware and software that optimize individual CEA systems, reducing labor—as well as electricity use and demand—by implementing control strategies for lighting, HVAC, and irrigation systems. These strategies include scheduling, dimming, daylighting, temperature and humidity optimization, staging and modulation of pumps and fans, and demand management.
• Integration: Hardware and software that optimize and connect CEA systems—including lighting, heating, ventilation, cooling, as well as irrigation and fertigation—to electricity use and demand.
• Artificial intelligence: Hardware and software systems that use machine learning, cameras and sensing technology to optimize resources like water and fertilizer, as well as electricity use and demand, based on plant growth and quality characteristics.
These characteristics include light levels, temperature, humidity, airflow, and irrigation flowrates, among others. The project included a market assessment, field evaluations, and this technology roadmap to identify cost-effective energy efficiency and demand response measures for smart environmental controls in California’s CEA sector.
The technology roadmap shares five program pathway recommendations, including ideas for two new energy efficiency measure packages:
1. Develop a deemed measure package for greenhouse supplemental lighting Daily Light Integral controls. Investor-owned utilities may have only three years to implement an energy efficiency program for Daily Light Integral controls before the energy code requires this automation strategy.
2. Develop a deemed measure package for greenhouse ventilation fan variable frequency drive controls. The existing agricultural fan measure is not applicable to greenhouses.