I talked to my 12 year old daughter this morning about how to minimize the power consumption for the hydroponic system for our vertical farming system. She suggested something that used gravity, and I looked on YouTube and found some interesting designs there. I think one of the things we're going to attempt to do is to have a fully gravity driven hydroponic system, with the exception of the initial weekly charging of the nutrients. Obviously as the week progresses, additional water and nutrients would be need to be added to the system, but hypothetically, it may be possible to have the majority of the operation of the feed system for the plants to be handled by valves and gravity. Since its my weekend to have my daughter, she and I will be planning on getting some PVC pipe and seeing what we can prototype together (provided that my "day job" doesn't take precedence). I'll post pictures of our progress as things progress.