Project 1:

Optimal management of energy resources in greenhouse crop production systems

In the interest of reducing energy consumption and CO¬2 emission while maintaining productivity, greenhouse growers have installed a wide range of auxiliary equipment, such as assimilate lighting, heat exchangers, short and long term heat buffers, co-generation units and heat pumps. The task of the grower to manage his equipment in the most economical way has become very complicated, not only because of the complex physics of the greenhouse dynamics, but also because of the uncertainty in the weather, and, in addition, the strongly fluctuating market prices of energy. The main challenge of this project is to formulate and solve this optimization problem and to develop optimal scheduling or management procedures.

This research is supported by the Dutch Technology Foundation STW, which is part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and which is partly funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Project 2:

Experimental development Robot Plotter as a service (ROPAS)

In this project Bontsema Consultancy is cooperating with Tyker Consultancy to develop a small robot for preparing lines in road construction. The role of Bontsema Consultancy is to advise on advanced control algorithms for the robot. The project is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.