What is EnergyCEA?
It is a multi-zone dynamic simulation framework for quantifying energy determinants and climate sensitivity in plant factories.
Why this work?
Plant factories with artificial lighting are energy intensive. Standard single-zone models cannot represent the thermal and moisture differences between crop canopies, surrounding air, and the wider room in large-scale vertical production.
Approach
EnergyCEA couples a triple-zone physical environment model with a calibrated strawberry growth module and validates the framework against operational data from a commercial facility.
It evaluates vertical-scaling effects and uses global psychrometric sensitivity analyses to identify how climate, equipment performance, and air enthalpy constrain energy use.
Key evidence
65.3%Share of total consumption attributed to HVAC for the reported strawberry-production case
+25%Reported summer energy intensity above the winter baseline
60.9–70.0kWh kg⁻¹ reported across favourable cold-climate and hot/humid conditions
Questions this work answers
Why use multiple zones?
Separate crop-canopy, surrounding-air, and room zones represent thermodynamic heterogeneity that a single well-mixed zone misses.