There’s an inherent geometric problem with using solar for vertical farms. They use the volume of the space, which increases by a cube factor. Solar, however, increases according to surface area, which is a square factor.
You thus quickly hit a limit where you can no longer power the lights for your vertical farm by solar panels you stick on the roof. You have to have either a field of solar panels elsewhere–which might have been used to grow food the old fashioned way–or you have to use something that scales differently. Wind also scales by surface area, so not that. Geothermal or nuclear are maybes.
Possibility one way around this is tweaking the spectrum of lights that plants use. Taking full spectrum sun lighting, converting it to electricity, and then using LEDs to create full spectrum lighting isn’t going to work. However, plants primarily use only a narrow space of blue and red light as part of photosynthesis. This isn’t the full story, either, as plants do use the rest of the spectrum as signals for other biological processes.
Now, do they need the rest of that spectrum all the time and at full power? Depends on the plant. It’s complicated, and we may end up customizing lighting for every crop.
Even then, the square-cube problem will put limits on how big vertical farming facilities can get while being powered by solar and/or wind.
Thank you. I had someone explain this to me before in this kind of directly data driven way but I studied astrophysics and macro-xenobiology so I am not the person to be explaining it back out.
But yeah all that.
It makes me wonder if you could build a vertical farm like a big greenhouse made of glass though and direct light from the sun through the building using reflectors without overheating and cooking the plants but, with green energy production you really get to a point where it’s the fields for growing crops previously are now covered in mined advanced electronics that need replacing and the farming structure itself which isn’t as scalable as just adding a field to your crop rotation.
This isn’t the problem you two think it is. No one is talking about feeding an entire city from one skyscraper. But, you could feed an entire block from one or two levels of a skyscraper.
I’m now going to block you two twits because I don’t have to time for this shit right now. Going out tonight to see Gladys Knight and I have to respond to someone helping me grow my business.
You know, if you feel the need to block people who are laying out arguments and being civil, then maybe you should rethink having Internet discussions altogether.
They ignore people providing data and argue their opinions are worth more than facts, call people rude names and take the chance to brag about themselves every chance they can take.
So they are the average American apparently and exactly the right level of self assured to be the desired group to sell anything too.
They really shouldn’t be here but none of us are ever gonna get that through to them. They will be right whether or not the have to ignore everyone else to be so.
