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When Automation Fails: Heatwave Scorches Greenhouse Grapes & Orchids · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and today we're talking about when automation goes wrong.
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  So when it comes to environmental controls in your glasshouse or your grow room.
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  The most basic form is just getting a thermometer or
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  a hygrometer and measuring the temperature
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  and the humidity and then opening some vents or
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  putting a heater on after that it's using a
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  max min thermometer and hygrometer then a
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  data logger and then after that there's a real step change
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  and that's using the the environmental sensors
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  to automate your your grow
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  room or your greenhouse and that can be when it's set and the
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  most basic form of that is when the temperature or the humidity goes
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  above or below a certain parameter certain set point
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  then it switches on or off then after
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  that you get integrated controllers that take into
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  account more than one variable so there
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  you have like vpd so it integrates into vpd and
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  other combinations of different variables and
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  there's a number of different sensors that have this
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  capability and then after that you have ai.
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  Controllers that use all
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  the sensor data and ai algorithms to
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  look at that almost like an algorithm is a recipe and
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  so you feed it the data about the crop and what
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  the current conditions are and what the previous conditions are and it can steer
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  your crop and things like that all great but what happens when it goes wrong
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  or what happens when there's a technical malfunction so the actual controller
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  might not go wrong but there might be something like one of the vents might
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  break or one of the heaters might burn out, something like that.
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  Well, that's happened on more than one occasion with disastrous results.
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  And there's a story today in the news about one where it's really gone wrong.
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  So a grape greenhouse in the Netherlands, the Nieuertunzeit nursery in Denhoorn.
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  Netherlands, has failed.
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  So the vents failed
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  and the greenhouse soared to over 50 degrees celsius
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  let me just check what that is in
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  american money that is 122 fahrenheit
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  so hotter than florida and obviously the automated system was supposed to ventilate
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  the greenhouse but during the heat wave it proved ineffective outside was over
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  35 degrees celsius so this was during the this couldn't have happened at a worse
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  time, and they still don't know why it happened.
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  95% of the grapes were,
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  turned, not killed, but the grapes were unharvestable. So scorched,
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  damaged, and just screwed up.
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  So this wasn't happening to a small grower. This was a large grower.
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  It wasn't a multinational, so it wasn't just some faceless corporation.
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  It was an entrepreneurial couple.
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  Sharon Dewey and Tim Van Der Kooley, they were the couple.
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  And so they've lost all their income for that year so really sad but the good
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  news is they can shift their focus to their algae production facility which
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  is called alga farm they've got a dedicated algae growing facility so always
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  good to have a backup and that's what they're doing so best of luck to sharon and tim,
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  and not very dutch sounding names are they sharon and tim we've got very dutch sounding surnames,
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  and it's not the only occurrence so steve van adricum of antsu vander they're
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  an orchid grower he had another issue on a particularly hot day he had a power
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  outage so it wasn't a vent.
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  Breaking it wasn't a controller going
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  down it's just simply a power outage caused the temperature
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  to rise in his greenhouse and the roof vents
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  failed to open and the shading screens didn't close
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  and as a result the majority
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  of his orchids were burnt and obviously orchids are
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  an ornamental crop and if they become unsaleable because
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  of that scorch they might be alive but they're unsaleable and
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  have to be thrown away or gone through
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  propagate you know another cycle to produce fresh leafy growth
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  so in that particular instance they they lost 75 percent of their crop or certainly
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  saleable crop the flowers and they had to buy in more orchids from abroad and
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  some of the plants were rescuable as long as they had an apical meristan And I don't know if you've,
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  they're a Vanda orchid, so the name of the company is Anzu Vanda.
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  The van der Orchids are one of my favourites. They're almost like a flat orchid,
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  and the leaves go either side, and then there's a really big ornamental spike,
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  and you can grow them in special van der vases,
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  and they grow them suspended in this greenhouse, so the root systems were exposed
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  to this extremely high air.
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  And this is not a small operation. They're growing in a massive greenhouse,
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  and all the vents fail, you can't manually open them.
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  So this is not a case of they were
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  just sat in the office or on holiday and they
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  didn't notice that the automation wasn't working properly once
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  the ones of power outage occurred then they couldn't do anything about
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  it and couldn't if you open the doors it's
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  just still not going to have an effect you couldn't manually pull
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  the the scrape sheets the shade
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  screening across and things like that so all the
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  leaves turn yellow and you just if you look on their instagram
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  account there's just a greenhouse full of yellow orchid plants it's disastrous
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  and then yeah the guy's almost crying talking about it so yeah maybe something
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  that has to be built into future greenhouses is this of what happens when there's a power failure like in.
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  Spain earlier this year where the power went off for a day and all the greenhouses
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  will have suffered there luckily and down in almaria wasn't height of summer
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  but there would have been issues around that as well and yeah so maybe if you're
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  going to have a power outage they often occur,
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  during periods of very very high temperature so because of
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  the effect of the high temperature has on the electrical system so
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  if you're going to have a power outage there's a good chance it's going to happen when
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  it's when it's very very hot it's not going to happen on a mild overcast day
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  unless something very strange has happened so just something to bear in mind
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  when automation goes wrong it can really mess up and it can destroy millions
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  of pounds worth of crop as in these two cases here real shame all right that's
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  been hydroponics daily for today till tomorrow goodbye.