Electricity cost is one of the key expenses in any flower farm. With the fuel component playing a crucial role in determining each month’s charge in Kenya, it has become increasingly important for farms to look into ways of cutting down cost to protect their profit margin.
Speaking exclusively to Floriculture Magazine, Mr. Kumar Sheth, CEO Leda Africa Ltd said, “While some are installing alternative, but often costly sources of energy, such as solar panels, the solution is perhaps as simple as changing the type of bulbs they use”. Adding, “Led Africa Ltd, an Indian company believes the cure to their woes lies in using Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs”. The company believes in the simplistic approach so much so that it has taken up the slogan ‘Saving Energy for Africa’.
And this is why. Most institutions and homes across the country use the ordinary incandescent bulbs that emit a yellow light. Research has shown that they waste 95 per cent of the electricity they consume.
That essentially means for every five units that appear in the electricity bill, 19 more were wasted. These bulbs are cheap but can only light up for about 1,000 hours, which means farms using the latter have to buy 50 bulbs, replace them 50 times and throw 50 burned out bulbs in the garbage, all while still paying high electricity bills. On the other hand LED bulbs, though slightly expensive to buy, take up to three years to burn out. The amount of money saved is enormous. For instance a 10 Watt bulb can operate for 50,000 hours and only consume about Sh4,700 according to research. But it is not solely for their longevity that Led Africa is staking its reputation on the LED bulbs. One of its objectives is to reduce the carbon footprint which is major cause of global warming.
The company says that unlike the ordinary bulb, LED bulbs production releases far much lesser amount of carbon dioxide in the environment. These means the farms that use them can be eligible to earn carbon credits. The bulbs are also environmentally friendly in that by not regularly requiring replacement, they don’t contribute to land fill as a result of disposal and they do not contain harmful ultraviolet rays and gases.
But the bulbs are not only advisable for use farms. Breeders and propagators too stand to save a pretty penny by using them. Broad spectrum grow lights produce a lot of light that plants can’t use efficiently. LED grow lights on the other hand only deliver the colours of light used by plants for efficient and healthy growth.
What’s more, the LED grow lights are warm to touch and won’t scotch young or tender plants as other forms of lighting can. And most of them operate at just a few degrees above room temperature thus reducing a breeders grow room cooling costs. Even better, with their low heat emission, it means growing plants won’t need to be watered so often given that they will transpire less. They can therefore be left unattended for a few days as workers concentrate their energies elsewhere.
The company manufactures flood, spot, tube, bay and panel lights to serve a farm’s all round lighting needs. It has set a target to change every bulb on the continent to the efficient and environment friendly LED.