Vertical farming - energy market integration: opportunities and challenges

Vertical farming is a controlled environment agriculture system with the potential to support resilient and scalable urban food production. However, its economic viability is challenged by high capital and operational costs, a substantial part of which is due to high energy expenditure. Meanwhile, global energy systems are undergoing rapid transformation due to increasing integration of renewable energy sources and the democratization of market-based mechanisms for maintaining grid stability. This evolving landscape creates an opportunity for vertical farms to participate in energy markets such as day-ahead, balancing, and flexibility markets by adjusting their energy usage for lighting and climate control in response to market signals. Doing so could reduce operational costs by reducing energy costs and generating additional revenue for providing services to the energy grid. This work examines the potential and challenges of integrating vertical farms as flexibility providers in energy markets. We discuss the relevant energy market structure and the potential economic benefits for vertical farms, and we formulate the underlying decision-making problem that governs this integration. We then identify gaps in understanding plant responses to variable lighting as critical barriers to implementation and outline research directions to address them. Finally, we support our discussion with small-scale laboratory experiments that illustrate the challenges of this integration.