A Colorado-based design and energy efficiency firm has signed a $3.4 million contact to provide engineering, controls and heating and cooling services for a cannabis aeroponic cultivation facility being developed in California.
Surna Cultivation Technologies will work on Aeriz Holdings Corp.’s new 96,000-square-feet cultivation facility in Riverbank, delivering building development, energy efficiency and HVAC services. Surna has worked with Aeriz on earlier cultivation plant projects in Arizona and Illinois.
The Riverbank project will utilize combined heat and power (CHP) generation for on-site electricity. The CHP power plant, also called cogeneration, will deliver both electricity and thermal energy on-site to improve energy efficiency and provide process heat at the site.
“The project includes Surna’s mechanical engineering services, controls design services and HVACD equipment for the veg, flower, and wet and dry cure rooms,” said Jon Kozlowski, Surna’s vice president of sles. “We are excited to work with a client for whom operating costs and efficiency gains are a priority and to have an engineering team that understands and can manage the complex engineering associated with this design.”
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Surna is incorporating the waste heat produced by the CHP plant into its mechanical design, resulting in substantial waste reduction in parallel with energy efficiency gains. As part of the HVACD equipment order, Surna is providing fan coils, boilers, air handling units and chillers.
“At Aeriz, it’s important to us to cultivate top of the line products, while managing operating costs and continuously improving. Working with Surna ensures that our cultivation climate is well-controlled, which helps us to guarantee the high quality we are known for,” said David Thomas, CEO at Aeriz. “We are also confident that Surna’s engineering expertise has improved our opportunities to continue to drive down operating costs with the incorporation of CHP into the mechanical design.
Surna’s design will include the controls of the mechanical system, lighting, CO2, and irrigation. The firm has provided engineering, controls and energy efficiency services to more than 800 cultivators nationwide, with a fourth of those being larger, commercial operations.
Aeriz grows aeroponic cannabis for sale. Using the aeroponic method (with roots grown indoors and suspended in the air while nutrients are delivered via a mist), the company has cultivated more than 94,000 cannabis plants, according to its website.
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(Rod Walton, senior editor for EnergyTech, is a 14-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a newspaper and trade journalist. He can reached at [email protected]).
