Energy optimization and plant comfort management in smart greenhouses using the artificial bee colony algorithm

Agriculture is an essential component of human sustenance in this world. These days, with a growing population, we must significantly increase agricultural productivity to meet demand. Agriculture moved toward technologies as a result of the demand for higher yields with less resources. Increasing awareness of the significance and influence of agricultural practices in global climate change has made the use of energy-efficient innovations a vital aspect of the agriculture sector. The use of greenhouses to provide controlled environments that encourage effective plant growth is one of the current associated approaches. If not properly maintained, the energy used to run the greenhouses’ chillers, heaters, humidifiers, carbon dioxide (CO₂) generators, and carbon emissions becomes expensive. The goal of this research is to create a sustainable greenhouse model while achieving the best plant growth requirements with minimal use of energy. In order to achieve the lowest possible amount of energy consumption, the optimization model considered temperature, humidity, CO₂ levels, and sunlight as essential parameters in the environment. The Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) optimization technique was utilized for setting the environmental parameters for plant growth, considered for the suggested system. The system’s inputs were plant-preferred factors, and plant comfort was achieved by applying ABC to boost the parameters’ efficiency. A fuzzy controller was utilized to regulate different devices, including humidifiers, heaters, chillers, and CO₂ generators, by entering the introduced values. The overall efficacy of the fuzzy controllers that switch On/Off the actuators was obtained by minimizing the error between the best estimates of environmental factors and the ABC optimized values. Additionally, the suggested method was contrasted with other effective algorithms, such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Firefly Algorithm (FA), and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Based on the results of the comparison analysis between the ABC algorithm and current practices, present procedures do not minimize the fluctuations in the inaccuracy between the target and actual environmental parameters, which is a necessary step towards increasing energy efficiency. The suggested method used 162.19 kWh for temperature control, 84.65405 kWh for Humidity, 131.2013 kWh for Sunlight, and 603.55208 kWh for CO₂ management, indicating the maximum energy efficiency. ACO needed 172.2621 kWh, 88.269 kWh, 175.7127 kWh, and 713.2125 kWh, in contrast to FA 169.7983 kWh, 86.04496 kWh, 155.8442 kWh, and 743.7986 kWh. Temperature, Humidity, Sunlight, and CO₂ were measured by GA at 164.1609 kWh, 86.19566 kWh, 174.6429 kWh, and 734.9514 kWh, respectively. In terms of Plant comfort, the suggested approach also outperformed 0.986770848 ACO (0.944043), FA (0.949832), and GA (0.946076). It is important to note that the research being done has the potential to minimize operating costs and maximize the amount of energy needed for plant growth, thereby creating a model for sustainable greenhouse agriculture.