Patent ID: 7502655

Claim:
A method for controlling resources for growing a plant, the method comprising the steps of: (a) receiving desired resource amounts for associated resources to achieve a desired plant production rate; (b) initializing a time period; (c) determining actual resource amounts for each of the associated resources; (d) determining costs for each of the associated resources to supplement the actual resource amounts to achieve the desired resource amounts for an upcoming time period; (e) selecting one of the associated resources which has the lowest of the costs; (f) supplementing the actual resource amount of the selected associated resource with the selected associated resource; (g) adding the supplemented resource amount of the selected associated resource to the actual resource amounts of the associated resources, and providing the additive total amount to the plant during the time period; (h) predicting an outside air temperature outside of a greenhouse containing the plant for the upcoming time period; (i) predicting solar photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) during the upcoming time period; and (j) calculating a greenhouse ventilation rate needed for indoor air temperature control of the greenhouse based on the predicted outdoor air temperature and the predicted solar PAR during the upcoming time period and controlling the greenhouse indoor air temperature based on the calculated greenhouse ventilation rate.