The DesignLights Consortium (DLC) recently announced that the second seminar of its Horticultural Webinar Wednesdays series will take place on August 26. The webinar, called “Incentives vs. Regulation – What Do They Mean for Product Selection,” will feature a roundtable discussion among cannabis/horticulture regulators and utility energy efficiency (EE) program administrators comparing approaches for constraining energy use and increasing grower participation in EE programs.

The session will include topics such as energy codes versus regulations, incenting beyond regulations, and key challenges for horticultural lighting market transformation. A 45-minute discussion group, “Can Rebates and Regulations Co-Exist”, will follow. Register for the webinar here.

On July 29, the DLC presented the first session of the webinar series, titled “Evolution of the DLC Horticultural Lighting Specs and Rebate Program Models that Support Market Adoption.”

“The turnout for our first Horticultural Webinar Wednesday in July exceeded expectations and generated an informative discussion on topics ranging from the development of the DLC’s horticultural lighting technical requirements to ideas for improving utility incentives for LED horticultural lighting,” DLC Executive Director and CEO Christina Halfpenny says. “With horticultural lighting accounting for an increasing share of electric load for many utilities across the country, discussions like these are vital to the economic growth and environmental sustainability of the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) sector.”

The final installment of Horticultural Webinar Wednesdays takes place on September 23 with “Moving Projects Forward: Leveraging Incentives to Minimize Costs” (register here).

The DLC’s Horticultural Webinar Wednesdays series comes in the midst of an update to the DLC’s Technical Requirements for LED-based Horticultural Lighting.  Meant to increase the efficacy threshold for the DLC’s Horticultural Qualified Products List, while continuing the transition to specific data and metrics that best represent horticultural lighting performance, the new policy will be released in final form in September and is expected to take effect in 2021.

To learn more about this webinar series and to see the full line-up of speakers, read the original release.