Waste Heat Calculator

Vertical Farming / Waste Heat

What is your facility's LED heat actually worth?

Enter your own numbers below to see, in real time, how much heat your lighting generates, what that heat could be worth if captured and sold, and how much you could save on your own cooling bill. All defaults come from the peer-reviewed benchmarks used in our full article on vertical farming waste heat, and you can adjust every assumption yourself.

Your facility

Example: Nordic Harvest runs at roughly 1,000,000 kg/year at full capacity, a small container farm might be 5,000 to 50,000 kg/year.
14.0
Benchmark range 10-18 kWh/kg, average 14 kWh/kg (Miserocchi & Franco, 2025).
60%
Based on liquid cooling cold-plate recovery rates documented for electronics/data centers, 50-70%.
0.0227
Levelized low temperature waste heat value range, 0.0084-0.0369 EUR/kWh (PEM electrolyser waste heat study, 2023).
22%
Lighting typically makes up 65-90% of total electricity, so climate control is the remaining 10-35%.
40%
Conservative estimate, some cooling/dehumidification load remains from plant transpiration regardless.
0.16
Typical EU industrial electricity price for medium-large consumers, 0.14-0.18 EUR/kWh.

Your results, updated live

Heat, 98.6% Stored in plant, 1.4%
Annual electricity consumption
700,000 kWh
roughly 80 kW average continuous draw
Usable heat captured per year
420,000 kWh
Value if that heat is sold
€ 9,534 / year
Avoided cooling electricity
61,600 kWh
Value as avoided electricity cost
€ 9,856 / year
Combined annual value
€ 19,390 / year
heat sale value + avoided cooling cost, stacked, from the same captured heat
One-time payment. Generates a branded, source-cited PDF with your exact numbers, ready to share with your team or investors.

This calculator uses the same methodology and sources as our article "The Overlooked Revenue Stream Hiding in Every Vertical Farm's LED Heat". All default values are drawn from peer-reviewed and industry sources cited in that article. Figures produced here are estimates for planning purposes, not a guarantee of actual recoverable value, which depends on your specific equipment, climate, and local heat or electricity market.

Gift this article