Scaling Power for Vertical Farming Systems with MEAN WELL NCP3200
Agriculture and farming are an ever-changing industrial landscape, always facing unique challenges and innovating solutions for the next generation,
but in the face of large disrupters such as Climate Change, new farming solutions like vertical farming present a new approach to an ever-growing problem of sustainability and scalability, both in terms of production yield and land usage.
What is Vertical Farming?
Although being trended as an emerging agriculture solution, vertical farming has been around for a while now in various forms, but its current technology-driven form is by far the most impressive. This developing form of vertical farming sees our everyday foods from fruit, vegetables, herbs, spices and leafy greens growing within an around-the-clock controlled habitat.
These habitats are controlled for lighting, temperature, watering, humidity as well as many other features to ensure food can be grown in optimal conditions 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Powering a Vertical Farm Installation.
Vertical farms can come in many different sizes, from small personal farms for domestic use to larger industrial warehouses with hundreds of pods and habitats running simultaneously. Reliably powering a scalable around-the-clock production line is a challenge.
Introducing MEAN WELL NCP-3200 Series.
The MEANWELL NCP-3200 series is the latest development in reliable current-sharing capable power supply units from MEANWELL. The NCP-3200 comes in low voltage options 24V DC and 48V DC and a high voltage 380V DC option, all of which have programmable output voltage and programmable output current.
Scalability
The NCP-3200 series current sharing ability can allow up to 40 power supply units to be connected in parallel. This can be achieved by implementing the DHP-1UT rack, housing up to four NCP-3200s per rack and can be stacked 10 high and paired with the CMU2 control unit to manage current and voltage outputs for the installation.
This scalability of power means when your vertical gardening installation acquires more grow pods for production, powering these additional pods is as simple as adding and configuring a new rack to your power cabinet.
In terms of maintenance, the NSP-3200s within the DHP-1UT rack are hot-swappable, meaning if a power supply unit fails or requires maintenance, simply remove the unit and replace it with a new one with no impact on your operational power needs.
Smart Communications
The NCP-3200 power supply units can be controlled and monitored via two intelligent buses - Power Management Bus (PM Bus) or Controller Area Network Communications (CAN Bus). These communication busses provide control for industrial controllers and power supply controls and work directly with the CMU2 controller.
In Summary
The NCP-3200 series provides vertical farming installations with a reliable and scalable power supply solution that can cater to the smaller grow pods or to the large industrial shed installations, and with added features such as hot-swappable rack units, ensure there will never be downtime in your growing operations.
Further Reading
We have listed similar articled at the end of this blog post, if you'd like to learn more about other interesting applications using high-powered scalable power supplies.
Need help?
Perhaps you’re an original equipment manufacturer developing new emerging technologies or R&D developing the next smarter efficient model, whether it be vertical farming, the latest in smart EV charger designs or green energy power, finding a reliable and scalable power supply is important to your innovation’s success. If your team is developing a prototype or R&D, the MEAN WELL Australia team is here to help.
With years of experience providing power solutions across a range of industries, the MEAN WELL Australia team is happy to give insight and find the right fit for your project.
Contact the MEAN WELL Australia Team today!
