New Lights for Produce

Jennifer Polanz

One of the stops I meant to make at Cultivate’22 was to the AB Lighting booth. The people behind the company aren’t new to the industry, but the AB Lighting brand was formed about a year ago as a subsidiary of the American cannabis lighting company Enlite.

Some of the AB Lighting options can be used for cannabis and produce, but most are designed for the energy-efficiency needs of produce growers. Because I didn’t get to the booth, I caught up with CEO Mark Honeycutt by phone to hear more about their offerings to the industry.

“One major difference is vegetable and flower growers don’t really need the big lights we offer on the cannabis side. The other difference is the greenhouse guy doesn’t have the power to run those big lights,” he says of produce growers. “A lot of times lighting decisions factor on how much power do you have to spare. They really look at efficiency and power management.”

He talks, too, about rebates available to mitigate the costs, which continue to go down, and the energy efficiency that LEDs offer. His company can help with rebate assistance, too, so growers can maximize the money available to them.

He highlighted the Top Light 330W for use in both flower and vegetable production, which made its debut at Cultivate last month. It’s a full-spectrum, 3.5 umol/J efficacy light that’s 3.2-in. wide so it won’t block natural sunlight in greenhouse production.

He also had two other lights in the booth for vegetable growers, a 200W Linear Top Light and 160W Inter Light, both of which come in 4-ft. and 8-ft. configurations. They daisy chain together, requiring only a junction box at the end of the row. These come in a 93% red and 7% blue spectrum with 3.7 umol/J efficacy for the Top Light and 3.0 umol/J efficacy for the Inter Light. IG