Tab. 8: Energy costs and investment into lights for one growing circle of tomatoes under different light treatments

Fig. 32: Sugar content of tomatoes

4.4.3 Light related costs

Since the application of the electricity law 65/2003 in 2005, the cost for electricity has been split between the monopolist access to utilities, transmission and distribution and the competitive part, the electricity itself. Most growers (95%) are, due to their location, mandatory customers of RARIK, the distribution system operator (DSO) for most of Iceland except in the Southwest and Westfjords.

The government subsidises the distribution cost of growers that comply to certain criterias. In recent years, the subsidies fluctuated quite much. After substitution / direct payment from the state of variable cost of distribution (95%) resulted in costs of about 1 ISK/kWh for distribution, while for the sale values amounted 5,89-7,49 ISK/kWh. However, it has to be taken into account that big vegetable growers can get at least 50% discount on the tariff values. Based on this information, were energy costs for tomato production calculated (Tab. 8). The electricity costs did not differ much between light treatments. In contrast, investments into lights were much lower for “HPS” than for “Hybrid high” and for “Hybrid”. The investment costs into lights more than doubled when Hybrid lights were used compared to only HPS lights (Fig. 34).