I bet you know everyone in the industry! Nate, Paulie (the owners of Growers House) and I were recently talking together at MJBizCon in Vegas and your name came up. Paul spoke so highly of you! You are very highly regarded in the cannabis industry, Brandy Keen! I know you have so much to teach the next generation of both women and men coming up in the cannabis business.
Since we are hosting a series on Women in Cannabis right now I want to talk to you a little about where you see todayâs cannabis industry for women. If you could offer one piece of advice to a young woman trying to break into the cannabis industry, what advice might you offer?
I love that question. There are a number of ways this can play out, but the alcohol industry has probably given us a pretty good road map (mass production vs. craft production) on the recreational side, and on the pharmaceutical side cannabis producers are probably not going to be compounding medicineâI suspect that ultimately producers will be just another supplier to the pharmaceutical industry.
In either case, weâre going to be driving to better efficiencies, greater economies of scale, and higher output.
For now, the Canadian market has a lot more money available to cultivators, so in that market, we have much larger facilities and much larger infrastructure investments associated with long term operations and revenue. In the US, while we have some big players, we are also really fragmented and thereâs not as big an appetite (yet) for the infrastructure investments associated with reducing long term operating costs. Over the long term, our focus on energy efficiency and how that relates to operating costs has to continue to evolve, and really Canada is leading the way there. For Surna, this means continuing to focus on the best efficiencies we can create as it relates to controlling environments.
Iâd also anticipate fine tuning of crop consistency (yields and physiology) and dialing in of a repeatable recipe to maximize results. This is the only way we can maximize and accurately predict revenues at the cultivation level. For Surna, this means exceptional consistency of environment and a focus on analyzing the data available to us.
Lastly, I believe that in many ways cannabis is showing us how food is likely to be produced in the future. Climate change, availability of arable land, population changes and water resources will likely drive food producers to controlled environments in the future. We already work with quite a few food clients, and we anticipate that in the coming years weâll see a shift in how the world produces food. Again, that focus will be on infrastructure investments, energy use and sustainability, and consistent environments to maximize output.
Haha, Nate and Paulie are two of my all time favorites. In the very early days, they were so focused on being an information resource to the industry and I loved thatâeveryone else was just peddling equipment and these guys were putting on information seminars with guest experts way back then. We run into the industry OGâs all the time and laugh about when we used to do trade shows and no one could say âcannabis.â
I get asked the question about being a female in the industry a lot honestly and Iâm not sure my answer fits the expected mold of breaking through a glass ceiling. The truth is, Iâve never felt held back or limited by my gender in any way shape or form, and that would probably be the number one thing Iâd tell any woman looking to get into any line of work: your gender does not define your professional qualifications, and you should not allow anyone to tell you otherwise. There are people in the world who might assess you that way, but as soon as you open your mouth and demonstrate that you know your s**t, that changes very quickly. Just be good at what you do, and have the courage to pursue it and to speak up when you have something valuable to add to the conversation, and the rest will come. At least thatâs been my experience.
The upper photo is a chilled water set up (in this case all of the piping is in room but it can be plumbed above the ceiling as well for less âclutterâ) with a series of ductless fan coils distributed throughout the room. These are 2500 SF/100 kW rooms with about 60 tons of mechanical cooling and dehumidification for redundancy. The client in this case opted for stand alone supplemental dehumidifiers as well (as opposed to integrated dehumidification control in the cooling coils). This facility has 10 identical flower rooms plus mother, clone and veg and has a 400 ton chiller plant outside. There are a number of different fan coil configurations, this is just one example, and of course itâs important to ensure that every surface in the room can be sterilized in this type of set up.
The lower photo is a rooftop showing a 60 ton set up with a dry fluid cooler in Colorado. When itâs below 35 deg ambient, we bypass the compressors and use the fluid cooler to keep the water in the chilled water set up cold (in this case, it reduces the electrical load by about 70%, but that varies by facility). This facility has 2 flowering rooms on a flip, each with about a 40 ton load, and a veg room, for a total load of about 100 tons but since the chilled water can be shared between rooms without sharing air between rooms, we only needed 60 tons of compressor to cool the facility.
Thank you for your detailed reply. Another question, what is your advice for the proper circulations of CO2 in a growing room? Are there simple adjustments that can be done to improve CO2 circulation? Many thanks, in advance.
It seems like the AMA flew by today! Provided there are no objections from @brandy.keen, you are welcome to continue to ask questions. @brandy.keen is very active on the GN forum and she is very helpful as wellâŠwe are very lucky to have her as a part of our growing community! Thanks Brandy!
Thanks so much for your time today and all your incredible and detailed resoinses. I know I learned a lot more about HVAC than I knew going into the AMA! We appreciate you so much, Brandy!
Absolutely. Destratification fans (vertical air movers) are an important part of our strategy for CO2 distribution. As youâre aware, CO2 is heavier than air, so you have a higher concentration at the floor than at the ceiling. Destratification fans are multi purpose in that they can eliminate the vertical layers of temp/humidity in the space, can help with CO2 homogenization, and can provide a nice distribution of air over the canopy. This is a product we carry so if youâd like some help designing your ductless room or determining the right number and distribution of destrat fans in the cultivation spaces please feel free to PM me any time.
All the core infrastructure is critical. Light, heat, cooling, water and nutrition are the core prebuilt mission critical decisions. These are investments with a twenty year ROI topics. The choice of benching dictates your base line space utilization.
Air distribution in growth chambers is well understood. I will find the link to plant physiology. The have hard numbers on air exchange, density and volumetric calculations. Hartâs old book on greenhouse design has all the basic numbers, you need.
In my opinion we are using the wrong HVAC strategy in grow rooms. Do you have an opinion? I think we need to use the fractal plate strategy, in environmental control for cooling.
What direction are you looking at in regards to lighting the grow? All the light manufactures have disappointed me in one way or another in addressing cannabis vs any vertical farm solutions. I see lots of companies taking old HID designs and building LED lights. Only two companies are close to the right direction, but fail for opposite reason. If I am going to spend a million for light infrastructure. I want a great light not an this will do.
All of our Hydro Innovations products are still offered on our website at https://surna.com/i-am-a/gardener-retailer/. We offer our gardener/retailer products individually or in packages!
