Heating.

Warmth, delivered exactly where the crop needs it

Heating is often the largest single energy cost in a greenhouse, so how heat is produced, stored and delivered matters enormously to both the crop and the bottom line. The backbone of the Dutch approach is pipe-rail heating: hot water circulated through steel pipes laid at crop level, warming the plants from within the canopy where the heat is actually needed rather than from high above. Those same pipes do double duty as rails for the picking and maintenance trolleys that move through the rows, a neat example of one element serving two purposes.

Delivering heat where it counts is only half the challenge; producing it economically is the other. Buffer tanks — large insulated hot-water stores — decouple heat production from heat demand, letting the boiler or CHP run when it is most efficient or when energy is cheapest and banking the warmth until the crop calls for it, often overnight. That flexibility is what allows a grower to heat around energy prices rather than being dictated to by them.

Combined heat and power (CHP) takes the logic further. A CHP unit burns gas to generate electricity, and in doing so produces heat and CO₂ as by-products — all three of which the greenhouse can use: the heat goes to the pipe-rail and buffer, the CO₂ enriches the crop, and the electricity powers the lights and installations or is sold back to the grid. Making one fuel input yield three useful outputs is a large part of why high-tech greenhouses can be energy-efficient despite their appetite for warmth.

Above all, heating is not run flat-out but computed continuously. Pipe temperatures are steered hour by hour against the climate target, the outside weather, energy prices and the position of the thermal screens, so the crop stays in its ideal band at the lowest possible cost. DutchGreenhouses® designs the heating system — pipe-rail, buffering, heat source and CHP integration — around the crop, climate and local energy market. Get in touch to design heating for your greenhouse.