Commercial greenhouses are increasingly seen as a more sustainable solution to importing large volumes of fresh produce with short shelf lives. To offer consumers locally grown, fresh, healthy produce that is also competitively priced, operations depend on intelligent, reliable power systems to provide ideal conditions at all times.
In the Czech Republic, ABB has supplied the all-important low voltage power distribution hardware to a new 11-hectare commercial greenhouse. As a long-standing partner to NWT, one of the country’s leading constructors and operators of commercial-scale greenhouses, all NWT’s greenhouse construction projects use ABB low voltage technologies. ABB has also worked with the company on biogas and photovoltaic plants that make these advanced agricultural facilities more sustainable.
The latest facility is the Bezdinek farm in Dolní Lutyně, in the eastern Moravian-Silesian region near the border with Poland. Its mission is to enable Czech people to eat healthy vegetables produced locally without pesticides all year round. The farm’s tomato crop plays a big role in this, with several tonnes of premium quality, fresh, ripe tomatoes harvested every day.
Jiří Stodůlka, director of NWT’s Agro division, said: “The Bezdínek farm has the most advanced greenhouse operation in the Czech Republic. Its special silvicultural lights make it the only facility able to produce fresh, healthy vegetables for 12 months of the year.”
The greenhouse grows its crops using a compostable substrate and the prevailingly rain water. And instead of pesticides, it uses biological pest protection. It recently became the first vegetable farm in the Czech Republic to achieve prestigious “Pesticide-free” certification.
ABB's low-voltage products, such as circuit breakers, switchboards and power distribution solutions, play an important role in ensuring constant conditions in greenhouses. ABB solutions also include air and molded case circuit breakers, AF contactors, manual motor starters, InLine II fuse switch disconnectors, OT switch-disconnectors, monitoring relays, and other devices that enable ABB to guarantee reliability and efficiency of NWT’s operation by securing consistent temperature, humidity and light conditions.
Vladimír Janypka, Managing Director of the Czech Republic’s ABB Electrification business, said: “ABB’s power distribution solutions are designed for harsh operating environments, making them better suited to the heat and humidity of greenhouse operations. We understand how important it is to deliver the reliability needed to keep the greenhouse productive – any downtime has an immediate impact and the speed at which the tomatoes ripen.”
NWT is a Czech technology and innovation leader with operations that encompass agriculture, civil construction, information technology and energy management. It operates large-scale commercial greenhouses at sites in Mutěnice, Smržice, Kožichovice, Velké Němčice in the Czech Republic, and at Kameničany in Slovakia.
