New developments in Taiwan's mushroom industry: Agricultural Research Institute develops an electrical energy sensing system to monitor electricity use in mushroom cultivation
Taiwan's mushroom industry has an annual output value of over ten billion, but crops including king oyster mushrooms and enoki mushrooms require environment-controlled cultivation, and therefore consume a great deal of electricity. To help the mushroom industry use electricity reasonably, the Agricultural Research Institute carried out the "Evaluation of Energy Saving in Mushroom Cultivation Sites Using an Electrical Energy Sensing System and Provision of Abnormal Warning Functions" project, and applied it in actual mushroom cultivation; the potential for future commercialisation is high.
Taking the medium-temperature mushrooms that people commonly eat, such as king oyster mushrooms and enoki mushrooms, as an example, the temperature normally has to be controlled at about 20 degrees, and during fruiting it also has to be controlled at about 18 degrees; electricity costs often account for 25% to 30% of the cultivation cost in environment-controlled mushroom houses.
Fang Yidan, chief secretary of the Agricultural Research Institute, said that ordinary mushroom growers can only see the total electricity bill and kilowatt-hours for a period through means such as Taipower bills, making it difficult to estimate costs and impossible to fully grasp the electricity use of each cultivation room. Through the electrical energy sensing system developed by the Agricultural Research Institute, the electricity required by each mushroom cultivation room can actually be measured, and growers can solve problems in the cultivation rooms with higher electricity consumption; the system can also provide warnings for situations such as power outages, reducing growers' losses.
Fang Yidan said that the project is currently cooperating with a king oyster mushroom grower in Taichung. Using the electrical energy sensing system for measurement, he found that inverter air conditioners can actually save at least 20% energy compared with traditional air conditioners, so he chose inverter air conditioners; he also discovered situations such as air-conditioning leaks or poor insulation in some cultivation rooms. By solving these problems and reducing electricity use, over a year it can save him roughly 20% to 30% of his electricity use. In the future, the Agricultural Research Institute also plans to cooperate with environment-controlled mushroom houses for enoki mushrooms, bunashimeji mushrooms and others, to grasp more data and facilitate the launch of a commercial sensing system.
