Overview
As energy costs and tight margins continue to challenge the financial viability of vertical farming, the UK Agri-Tech Centre has actively been supporting industry partners in developing data‑driven solutions that make total controlled environment agriculture production more efficient and commercially viable.
The ACDC (Advanced Crop Dynamic Control) system is one such solution. Developed through an Innovate UK-funded project, this multi-technology collaboration uses real-time plant feedback to automatically regulate lighting inputs.
The system was installed at the UK Agri-Tech Centre’s Vertical Farming Development Centre (VFDC),
- FOTENIX INDIA, supplying plant spectral data
- Vertically Urban Horti-Blade™, providing dynamic lighting technology
- Ostara, integrating these inputs into an autonomous control platform
The ACDC system switched lighting between ‘maximum production’ and ‘energy saving’ lighting recipes based on real-time spectral signatures for plant health.
System Performance
Growers need flexibility when managing energy use, crop quality and system performance in vertical farms. In this trial, the spectral signals and thresholds used in the ACDC System were selected to demonstrate the system can switch lighting modes based on signal input from the plant. Adjusting these settings, growers will be able to tailor the technology to their own crops and prioritise different production goals.
Refining the integration
During testing, the ACDC System successfully automated the switch between the two lighting recipes. While the core functionality worked well, it was not flawless. The system achieved the intended daily light duration 81% of the time, which may have contributed to reduced growth performance in the ACDC-grown plants.
Impact on crop output
While spinach yield performance was slightly lower in the trial than the control, crop appearance and quality remained consistent across both systems. Insights from the FOTENIX spectral data suggest that ACDC-grown plants may have diverted energy toward protective responses rather than growth. This highlights opportunities to refine control thresholds and crop-specific optimisation.
Meaningful gains in energy and labour efficiency
The ACDC System successfully delivered impressive energy savings. When the accounting for appropriate operational parameters, operation was 21–25% more energy efficient than the control system.
The FOTENIX INDIA sensing platform provides constant, high‑quality, reliable data for the whole crop to support strategic decision‑making and recipe selection by Ostara. The system has the potential to automate all manual crop assessments—work that normally requires more than 20 hours of labour per trial.
Key Takeaways
The integrated ACDC system demonstrated that vertical farms could use real‑time plant data to automatically adjust lighting recipes, achieving energy savings of up to 25%. While the trial recorded a slight reduction in yield, this was linked to early-stage integration challenges and the need to refine which spectral signatures the system responds to. These findings highlight promising opportunities:
- Lighting can dynamically respond to plant conditions
- Energy use can be reduced without compromising crop quality
- Spectral feedback gives early insight into growth vs stress trade-offs
This collaboration illustrates the value of technology integration to move towards more commercially viable vertical farming.
The UK Agri‑Tech Centre will continue to work closely with the three companies to further progress the ACDC integrated system toward full optimisation. Future support include structured trials and analysis to refine the decision‑making model (e.g. signal selection), in collaboration with technology partners.
The individual technologies are already available on the market through the consortium partners, providing immediate value to growers looking to adopt data‑driven, energy‑efficient solutions.
