4 SKIES’ vertical farming partner is IGES Canada Ltd., a Kingston, Ontario, based company which specializes in organically grown produce using state-of-the-art vertical farming and greenhouse technologies.
They will provide the design and planning expertise needed to install and implement vertical farm and or greenhouse operations for our projects which utilize the waste heat and CO2 from the natural gas power plant units. Their story is a local, good-news story that grew out of the tragedy at Fukushima. Using off-the shelf-technology from Japan, first designed to ensure food safety in the most adverse conditions, their integrated, environmentally controlled greenhouses can operate continuously in any climate. They can produce 100 times/m2 the GMO-free food of soil farming, without pesticides, while using 99% less water. Their packaging and delivery systems promise clean food, local employment, and stronger, more resilient communities. Through the use of computer controlled, multi-spectrum, LED lights, supplied by LEC – Light Emitting Computers Inc., with specific “light recipes” for each crop, ensures quality, color, nutrition and yield for growth and health.
4 SKIES’ LED lighting partner is LEC-Light Emitting Computers Inc., a Canadian company based in Victoria BC, on Vancouver Island.
LEC developed and owns the patent for a LED lighting technology being marketed under the name LEV Plant Whisperer®. This revolutionary new LED technology digitally regulates the power output for each of eight colors providing discrete control of emission spectrum. Like a chameleon, the system can match the chroma and intensity of virtually any commercially available lighting system. It can switch between spectra as many times as necessary. For instance, the light can switch from the spectrum of tube lighting to that of metal halide and then to Sodium, all electronically, and can even tweak the Sodium chroma, creating any spectrum. With more advanced programming options, each color's independent program becomes controllable into kilohertz frequencies and are capable of synchronous resolution with the other colors. Color channels are independently programmable with multiple pulse-rate harmonics, from macro cycles as seasonal & diurnal, cycles through the range of human immediacy, such as minutes to centi-seconds, right down to biologically effective speeds as may be found in the kilohertz range for such purpose as entomological research on controlling bugs. An immediately available upgrade path includes synchronously regulated current modulations capable of effecting photobiology recently demonstrated to be sensitive to micro-second pulses.