CoolStack® - a LED top light for greenhouse cultivation with passive cooling

The CoolStack®, our besteller, can be found in the majority of our projects, either in full LED or hybrid-lit greenhouses.

The CoolStack® is the most powerful and modular LED grow light currently available on the market.

Directly placed under the greenhouse trellises and with an ultra-small width, we guarantee a minimum of additional shadows on the crops.

What makes the CoolStack® the ideal LED grow light for your greenhouse project?

7 different power and light outputs guarantee the ideal match for the required light level for your crops with a minimal number of light fixtures and ideal light spreading.

A good example of the benefits of this approach is our CoolStack® Boost system in strawberry greenhouses.

For early or late strawberry cultivation, we have lowered the producers' investment cost per square metre by over 25% with just 2 CoolStack® Boost lamps per 8-meter trellis.

The ideal light distribution per crop with intelligent lens beam angle design

We can achieve the perfect light distribution for each crop with the help of sophisticated lens beam design.

Spreading the light in the widest way is, of course, the easiest solution and gives, in many cases, a good and even light distribution, but it is far from ideal when it comes to light penetration in the crop.
A high-wire crop project where the lights are less than 2 metres from the top of the crop has quite different needs than, say, a lettuce project where the distance is 4 metres.

To provide you with the best light distribution and greatest crop penetration for your project, we have created a wide variety of various beam angles and patterns.

Upgradable LED engines for a sustainable future

Over the last few years, extremely big steps have been taken in the efficiency of LED grow lights, which has brought us to an exponential increase in the use of LED grow lights for greenhouses for a wide range of crops.

The motivations of the growers have a wide range, with each its specific aims.

• Saving energy compared to HPS SON-T installations is probably the most common driver today for growers to invest in LED grow lights.
  
  As of today we can replace the light level of a 1000 watt HPS SON-T lamp with just 530 watts of LED grow light energy or a saving of 47%.


• More light for the same power consumption – especially light loving crops like tomatoes profit a lot from extra light for the same energy cost.
  
  While the standard for lighted tomatoes was 180μmol/sm² just a few years ago, the light levels now increase to 300μmol/sm².


• Better temperature controls during growth – one of the main disadvantages of growing with HPS SON-T lamps is the extensive heat these lamps produce.
  
  A 1000 watt HPS SON-T generates 700 watts of heat – more specifically the biggest portion of this heat goes to radiated heat which leads immediately to ambient temperature and leaf temperature increase.
  While growers aim for higher light levels, this heat can become too much for a well controlled production.
  In these cases a hybrid or full LED installation can be the way to go.


• Specific crop improvements during various growth stages. One of the biggest advantages of LED grow lights is the potential to steer plants with specific supplemental light spectra.
  
  In this way, germination can be sped up, stronger root production can be achieved or stretching of the plant can be avoided. Higher blue rates improve germination and root development, end-of-day treatments with far red can induce length growth from trusses and stems.

Today we can say that the efficiency of LED grow lights is significantly higher than that of traditional SON-T lamps, but the world of Horti cultural lighting is constantly evolving. MechaTronix is continuously investigating in research and collaborating with market leading universities and specialists. To anticipate the future findings we have developed our grow lights in such a way that the light engines can be upgraded individually without having to re-invest in a complete new grow light installation.

Why would you upgrade your grow light LED engines over time?

▲ Electricity prices evolution in €/Mwh Belgium

• When you would save more energy cost than the upgrade of the LED engines would cost over time.
  
  This is mainly the case for growers who pay high energy prices, like in west and north Europe, and crops that run with many lighted hours per season, like tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers,…


• When your crops would benefit more from the extra light you get after an upgrade than the cost of upgrade.
  Especially for light loving crops which would give a higher produce at a higher light level.
  
  For example a tomato grower who installed a light level of 180µmol/sm² in 2018 at an efficiency of 2.5µmol/W.
  This grower could today move for the same power consumption to a light level of 250µmol/sm² with a simple upgrade.


• When new light recipes are proven to be more efficient.
  
  Up to 2020 strawberries were grown under the classic 90/5/5 RBW spectrum. In 2021 new research stated that the use of far red has been proven to give a higher growth results.
  
  

Longest life time and lowest light decay over time.

It maybe doesn’t show from the outside, but the CoolStack® is a true masterpiece of technology.

Where most LED grow lights use simple cooling principles like a block of aluminum, watercooling or coolingfans, the heart of the CoolStack® has a sophisticated passive heat pipe and a stack fin cooler.

This technology, which is implemented in a lot of high end devices like lap tops, iPads and smart phones, guarantees you the best thermal management of the LEDs on the market.

The light efficiency, the life time and the light decay (how fast or slow the light reduces over time) are all directly related to the LED temperature of the grow light.

So with the CoolStack® which runs the internal LEDs as cold as possible, you as a customer will have a grow light that lives longer, has a higher efficiency of light per watt and maintains his light at a higher light level over time.

With a lifetime of 75.000 hours L90B50 and a warranty of 10 years there is quality wise nothing even close to what the CoolStack® offers.