The indoor agriculture industry: A promising player in demand response services

Demand response (DR) programs currently cover about 2% of the average annual global demand, which is far from contributing to the International Energy Agency’s “Net Zero by 2050” roadmap’s 20% target. While aggregation of many small flexible loads such as individual households can help reaching this target, increasing the participation of industries that are major electricity consumers is certainly a way forward. The indoor agriculture sector currently experiences a significant growth to partake in the sustainable production of high-quality food world-wide. As energy-related costs, up to 40% of the total expenses, may preclude full maturity of this industry, DR participation can result in a win-win situation. Indeed, the agriculture system must transform and become a sustainable source of food for an increasing number of people worldwide under the constraints of preservation of soils and water, carbon footprint, and energy efficiency. We considered the case of the Russian Federation where indoor farming is burgeoning and already represents a load of several thousand megawatts. To show the viability of the indoor farming industry participation in implicit and explicit DR programs, we built a physical model of a vertical farm inside a phytotron with complete control of environmental parameters including ambient temperature, relative humidity, CO2 concentration, and photosynthetic photon flux density. This phytotron was used as a model greenhouse. We grew different varieties of leafy plants under simulated DR conditions and control conditions on the same setup. Our results show that the indoor farming dedicated to greens can participate in DR without adversely affecting plant production and that this presents two significant economic advantages: first, on the industry side, savings ranging from 15.34% up to 23.03% of the complementary lighting energy cost; next, an increase of up to 62% of the latest reported capacity participating in the current Russian DR program. •Changing supplementary lighting under DR does not affect the plants vegetative growth•DR in indoor agriculture saves up 23.03% of the supplementary lighting energy cost•Russian indoor agriculture can provide up to 62% of the current DR program•Yearly benefits up to $110 mil. and $16 mil. for the Russian grid and indoor farming•Demand response does not reduce the indoor agriculture industry carbon footprint