Energy balance and climate control assessments in greenhouse projects using Hortinergy, a friendly scientifically based web tool

Climate management and energy consumption are major issues for greenhouse production. For the professionals of horticulture, the crucial question arising during the greenhouse design process is to define an optimal configuration adapted to both climate, crop and investment capacities. The available web solutions rarely meet all these requirements and it is the reason why an online friendly decision-making tool called “Hortinergy.com” has been developed to facilitate both accessibility and diffusion to growers worldwide. The main challenge was to reduce as much as possible the number of input parameters while keeping a high accuracy compared to greenhouse measurements. The developed software combines innovative scientific models, existing open source software, crop and material libraries, climate regulation algorithms and parameters for both classical and modern equipment (semi-closed greenhouses, buffer tank, etc.). Specific modules and algorithms were developed with scientific research centers (crop evapotranspiration, greenhouse natural ventilation, etc.) to meet all these requirements. The calculations are performed on an hourly basis and the results combine climate (temperature, humidity, radiation), thermal (heating, cooling), moisture management (humidification, dehumidification), and biological (disease risks) modules. Data results were validated in real-size facilities against greenhouse-crop measurements, showing less than 10% margin error for all examined criteria.