Hyperion relies on ams OSRAM’s expertise in Horticulture LEDs to grow Premium Tomatoes
The digital transformation touches every aspect of our lives. It redefines the world as we know it. Backed by the explosive growth of interconnected devices, all powered through sensors. We at ams OSRAM are creating the cutting edge sensor solutions that are pushing the boundries of innovation and shaping our future.
Germany -- 21/07/2021
Customers increasingly value best premium vegetables and fruits that are grown closer to home. With horticulture lighting, local greenhouses can provide crops with the exact light composition of red, blue and white light they need for ideal growth and premium flavour. In addition, energy efficiency is an important topic for greenhouse owners to maximize cost savings and improve productivity. ams OSRAM has been leading the growth market for Horticulture LEDs for many years by providing a dedicated product portfolio with market leading efficacy. The new generation of Oslon Square Hyper Red LEDs is now used in a joint project with Hyperion Grow Lights, a provider of LED horticultural lighting solutions for commercial growers, to ensure optimal return on investment. In one of the largest fully lit greenhouses in Germany, the advantages of those luminaires are demonstrated.
In order to fulfil a major new order for Piccolo tomatoes – the first to be grown exclusively in Germany – Gemüseproduktion Zorbau has expanded its greenhouse in Luetzen, near Leipzig, by 1.36 hectares in 2020 and is working exclusively with LED-based luminaires to grow the crops. For the expansion of the production location with LED luminaires, Zorbau relied on the expertise of Hyperion using ams OSRAM LEDs. In the past, High Pressure Sodium lamps (HPS) have been used by Zorbau, but those lamps transform a large amount of the electrical energy into heat, which is both inefficient and limits the amount of supplementary light that can be added without excessive heat load in the greenhouse.
“To deliver the year-round quality required for the new tomato varieties, a lot of light is needed. HPS would use too much energy and generate excessive heat, and so it was decided to use LEDs. We felt that the Hyperion 3k fixture with the latest ams OSRAM Oslon Square LEDs offered the best solution, using the same number of LED fixtures as in the HPS section of the greenhouse, but delivering over 40% more light and using 20% less energy”, says Dr. Lukas Scholz, Managing Director of Gemüsering Greenhouse Operations.
Depending on the greenhouse crop, the right light spectrum and intensity of photons differ for plant health and optimized production yield. “Together with ams-OSRAM's expertise we have been able to combine different requirements in our Hyperion 3k LED grow lights using the latest Oslon Square High-Power LEDs for horticulture to achieve best crop yield and quality while saving energy. The Hyperion 3k fixture utilizes a reliable and efficient active air-cooling system to deal with the heat from up to 1000 watts of LED power. This enables a high output and efficiency in a compact design, that is easy to install and maintain. The installation at Zorbau, measured at over 250 μmol/s/m², is one of the highest intensity LED installations in Western Europe," said Jonathan Barton, Director of Hyperion.
With the Oslon Square Hyper Red LED, Greenhouse operators benefit from a radiant flux of 1.040 mW at 74% WPE (wall-plug efficiency) and a photon flux of 5.71 µmol/s at an efficacy of 4.04 µmol/J at 700 mA. For applications with higher efficacy requirements, the LED provides 79% at a driving current of 350 mA and 81% at 250 mA with an efficiency of 4.5 µmol/J. This allows customers to save energy and reduce the overall costs of the greenhouse. The long lifetime of over 100,000 hours, even at high temperatures, also contributes to this. With a footprint of only 3.0 mm x 3.0 mm, the Oslon Square thus enables long-lasting and space-saving horticulture lighting solutions based on LED.
ams OSRAM offers a broad horticulture LED portfolio for professional top lighting, inter lighting and vertical farming applications: The High- and Mid-Power LED families include 660 nm (hyper red), 450 nm (deep blue) and 730 nm (far red). All important wavelengths are provided in three different radiation angles 80°, 120° and 150° to support the perfect lighting for all types of plants and flowers. This enables LED solutions that support the growing food needs for generations to come without long transportation distances.