LED grow lights help Taiwan orchard save half of the electricity

Taiwan's Tainan City Agriculture Bureau has promoted the Dragon Fruit LED Light Lighting Subsidy Program. In addition to allowing farmers to respond to power saving policy, it can also adjust the excessive price drop of Dragon Fruit production. Xie Mingshu, head of the Piny Farm, who planted the dragon fruit, said that the farm replaced all the traditional bulbs with LED lights about four years ago, saving nearly 50% of the electricity cost every year compared with the past.

Xie Mingshu planted 15 hectares of dragon fruit. He said that before using traditional light bulbs, 2,500 bulbs were needed for 1 hectare. The monthly electricity bill was nearly 25,000 NTD. The orchard was completely replaced by LED grow lights 4 years ago. Nowadays, the monthly electricity costs are almost 10,000 NTD, which not only save a lot of costs but also more environmentally friendly. He said that this kind of LED grow light is actually a plant growth lighting lamp for outdoor use. It adopts the specific spectrum design to increase the flowering rate, and prolong the crop maturity time to avoid the production period and wind disaster.

The Agriculture Bureau pointed out that the planting area of Tainan dragon fruit from 321 hectares in 2015 to 356 hectares in 2017. This year, we tried to promote subsidies for purchasing LED grow lights and invited farmers to save energy and reduce carbon from agricultural lighting.

The Agriculture Bureau said that the planned funding is now 940,000 NTD. If the farmers replace more than 2,500 traditional energy-saving bulbs per hectare and change them to 12W (watts) or more, they will subsidize one-third of the purchases per hectare. Ten thousand yuan is the upper limit.

The Agriculture Bureau said that although the price of the LED grow lights are more expansive than the traditional lights, it can save farmers a lot of electricity bills in the long run.