Is HyPAR only appropriate for horizontal applications?

This is a question I was asked on LinkedIn. You can see the post here: LinkedIn Post

Well, a few things:
1. The light penetrates quite deep into the building envelope - significantly deeper than a 600-800W LED grow lamp
2. The light penetration allows for large bushy tree-like plants to be grown (vines)
3. There are tower designs like: ZipGrow Inc. and Sky Greens Canada that Bob Holm promotes that will work, DLI contingent, of course.
4. Lastly, the tubes could illuminate the top, most light hungry plants like canna, while the lower levels could be outfitted with lower DLI crops.

With all of that said, there are absolutely locations where a single, horizontal layer is going to be economically justified - think cheap real estate, lots of sun and expensive energy resources...

Other thoughts: the technology could couple well with other methodologies and solve for climate control issues. A vertical farm could couple with the HyPAR.farm tech where additional biomass is needed, additional land is available but energy is either expensive or not available at all... Like all methods, this is not a panacea.

And finally, I think the days of mono-real estate investments in agriculture are in the rear view mirror.