Frequently asked questions

Gebbora is a web-based simulation and design platform for controlled environment agriculture (CEA). The first tool live is the Greenhouse Simulator at sim.gebbora.app, which runs hourly physics on real climate data for any greenhouse design anywhere on Earth. The full platform spans design, feasibility, and daily operations -- one account, one place to work.

Most greenhouse projects worldwide are designed on experience and best guesses, because the tools that exist sit in one of three boxes: locked inside universities, built for generic buildings, or sold as enterprise consulting engagements. Gebbora was built so that any greenhouse professional anywhere on Earth -- not just those with a six-figure consulting budget -- can design, model, and de-risk a greenhouse with rigorous physics.

CEA stands for controlled environment agriculture: any growing system where the environment (light, temperature, humidity, CO2, irrigation) is actively managed rather than left to ambient conditions. Greenhouses, vertical farms, growth chambers, and plant factories all sit under the CEA umbrella. A deeper definition and where CEA is going next live under CEA 4.0.

Gebbora is a software platform. The tools are self-service, pay-per-analysis, and intended to give professionals the rigor of a full engineering study without the consulting engagement. Custom paid consulting is not the business model.

The About page covers the mission, the founding belief, and what the team is building. The launch post on the blog walks through why the Greenhouse Simulator is the first tool out the door.

Four purpose-built tools across the lifecycle of a greenhouse: Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator (climate and crop simulation), Gebbora CAD (BOQs, load analysis, structural design), Gebbora Numbers (feasibility and financial modeling), and Gebbora Companion (mobile decision support for daily operations). The platform marketing site lives at gebbora.com; each product gets its own subdomain at launch.

Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator is live at sim.gebbora.app. The other three -- CAD, Numbers, and Companion -- are in active development and announce their launch dates as each ships.

Specific launch dates are kept off the public site until each product is close enough to commit. CAD, Numbers, and Companion are all under build; the engineering team prefers under-promise, over-deliver. The About page and the blog carry the most current status.

Yes. The products page carries an email-capture for upcoming products. One signup covers all three -- you will get a single notification per launch, no other marketing.

Yes. One Gebbora account is the design intent across the platform. Credits, profile, and history are shared across tools as they ship.

Yes. Gebbora Numbers (feasibility and financial modeling, run against real climate-driven energy loads) is built specifically for the investor and finance side -- net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), payback, and yield-and-cost sensitivities, framed as decision-support rather than advice. Until Numbers ships, the Greenhouse Simulator already gives investor-grade visibility into a project's energy and yield envelope. More on who Gebbora is for on the About page.

Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator is a web-based tool that models the thermal, optical, and plant-growth performance of any greenhouse design (from a simple tunnel to a multi-span Venlo) against 10 to 40 years of real hourly climate data for the exact site. Each run is 8,760 hourly physics calculations covering radiation, heat transfer, crop transpiration, daily light integral (DLI), vapor pressure deficit (VPD), and energy loads. Live at sim.gebbora.app.

Every engine module is built on published physics: FAO-56 Penman-Monteith for evapotranspiration, Stanghellini for stomatal conductance, and standard heat-transfer equations for conduction, convection, and radiation. Methodology is documented; no black boxes. Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator offers two accuracy levels: a standard analysis that runs in seconds, and a decision-grade coupled analysis that captures feedback loops between heating, cooling, and crop transpiration for engineering-level confidence. Real-world outcomes may vary due to the complex interactions of climate, plant physiology, and site-specific conditions.

Standard analyses complete in under 30 seconds: 8,760 hourly calculations per simulated year, from a browser. The decision-grade coupled analysis processes the same data with feedback coupling between engines and typically completes in 2 to 5 minutes. Both tiers run entirely in the cloud; there is nothing to install.

By default, Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator uses PVGIS (using SARAH-2/3 satellite radiation) for hourly irradiance and temperature, with coverage spanning most of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. For enhanced accuracy, the expanded data option pulls from Open-Meteo's archive of 122 meteorological variables -- humidity, wind speed and direction, soil temperature at multiple depths, dew point, wet bulb, and reference evapotranspiration -- sourced from ERA5 reanalysis and 49 weather models worldwide. Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery integration is coming soon.

Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator ships with a built-in library of 23 crops, from tomato, cucumber, and lettuce to peppers, strawberries, roses, and orchids. Each crop profile includes validated environmental setpoints for light (PPFD/DLI), temperature, humidity, and CO2, with full academic citations. Need a crop that is not in the library? You can create up to 50 custom crop profiles per account, either from scratch or by duplicating and adjusting an existing entry.

Yes, fully web-based. Open a browser, sign in at sim.gebbora.app, and the simulation runs in the cloud. No installer, no graphics-card requirement, nothing to update. Works on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge (latest two versions of each).

Four at v1: English, French, Arabic, and Hindi. The interface, the on-screen reports, and the PDF exports all follow the user's selected language. Additional locales (Spanish, Indonesian, Bengali, Urdu, Swahili, Vietnamese, Filipino) are sequenced as each market signals demand.

Yes. Every analysis ships with a 10-to-20-page PDF report covering inputs, climate, plant growth, energy, and a setup summary -- suitable for stakeholders, an audit trail, or attaching to a feasibility study.

Single-span tunnels, gothic and quonset arches, multi-span Venlo, sawtooth, and lean-to greenhouses are all supported today. Cover material, shading, screen position, and ventilation strategy are configurable per zone. Vertical-farm and plant-factory modules will follow as crop physiology and lighting models are finalized.

Yes. The cover and shading library carries 35-plus pre-validated materials (glass, polyethylene, polycarbonate, ETFE, shade nets, thermal screens), and the simulator accepts custom optical and thermal properties for materials not in the library. Citations and source datasets are visible per entry.

The full feature-by-feature comparison table lives on the Simulator product page. Short version: Gebbora is the only web-based simulator with hourly physics on real climate data, transparent methodology, and pay-per-analysis pricing. KASPRO (Wageningen) and Virtual Grower (USDA) sit inside universities; Cornell GEM is research-only; Hortinergy is a paid annual license (EUR 490 to EUR 6,900 per year, as published April 2026).

The simulator is mobile-responsive and runs on a phone browser, but the interface is optimized for tablet and desktop. Mobile-first daily operations -- forecasts, sensor aggregation, satellite snapshots -- are the job of Gebbora Companion, which ships as the dedicated mobile app at launch.

Yes. Every Gebbora account gets 250 free credits on signup (enough for several full design runs) plus 180 credits refreshed every month, for free. See pricing and account for the full credit logic.

CEA is controlled environment agriculture: growing systems where light, temperature, humidity, CO2, and irrigation are actively managed. Greenhouses, vertical farms, growth chambers, and plant factories all sit under the CEA umbrella. The Simulation gap post walks through where CEA is in 2026 and why current tooling falls short.

CEA 4.0 is the rigor-first generation of controlled environment agriculture: data-driven design, hourly-physics simulation, and methodology that holds up to audit. It is the rebuild that earlier generations of CEA (greenhouse 1.0, hydroponics 2.0, sensor-driven 3.0) skipped over -- the foundations that let a project face an investor, a regulator, or a climate-skeptical board with numbers rather than estimates. The Simulation gap post has the long version.

A spreadsheet collapses 8,760 hours of weather into one or two design-day numbers. That is fine for a hand calculation; it is not fine for a multi-million-dollar greenhouse where the energy demand, the crop-stress hours, and the yield envelope all depend on which hours of the year hit which extremes. CEA 4.0 needs full annual hourly physics, multi-engine coupling, and citable data sources -- none of which a spreadsheet can give.

Three things: real hourly climate data (PVGIS, Open-Meteo, ERA5 reanalysis -- not assumption tables), purpose-built physics engines (radiation, heat transfer, crop transpiration, energy load, DLI/VPD, all coupled), and transparent methodology with every equation cited. Gebbora is built around those three. The Simulation gap post lays out the full case.

Hourly greenhouse simulation runs the physics of a greenhouse -- solar gain, ventilation losses, heating demand, cooling demand, crop transpiration -- once per hour across an entire year (8,760 hours). It captures what design-day modeling misses: the morning when humidity drives the cooling load, the week when DLI starves the crop, the night when heating peaks for a colder hour than the design day assumed. Long form in the Hourly vs design day post.

A design day is a single representative day -- typically the hottest or coldest 1% day for the location -- used to size heating, cooling, and ventilation in a hand or spreadsheet calculation. It is the engineering shortcut that pre-computer-era CEA inherited. It still has value for first-pass sizing; it stops being enough the moment the project needs annual energy cost, crop-stress hours, or hour-by-hour control logic.

Because greenhouse performance is an integral, not a peak. Yield is the sum of every hour the crop spent inside its envelope; energy cost is the sum of every hour the heating or cooling ran; investor risk is the count of hours the system spent under stress. None of those are visible from a single design day; they only emerge when every hour of the year is simulated. The Hourly vs design day post walks the math.

An investor running hourly simulation can see annual energy cost, yield distribution across the year, cash-flow timing, and the count of stress hours -- not just whether the greenhouse can heat or cool at the worst hour. The conversation shifts from feasibility to financial modeling. A project that looks marginal on a design day might be strong on the annual integral, and the other way around. Gebbora Numbers (coming soon) is built specifically on the annual hourly output.

A grower running hourly simulation can see which weeks of the year the crop spent outside its target DLI range, which months drive heating cost, which time-of-day cooling demand peaks, and how a change in cover material or screen schedule moves all of those. The daily decision shifts from "is this design adequate?" to "which trade-offs cost me the most, hour by hour?". The Hourly vs design day post shows this on a real project.

PAR is the 400 to 700 nanometer band of the spectrum -- a region of light. PPFD is the measurement of how many PAR photons arrive on a square meter per second, reported in µmol/m²/s. PAR names what counts; PPFD measures how much of it is arriving right now.

Compute saturation vapor pressure at the air temperature using the Magnus approximation, multiply by (1 minus relative humidity as a decimal), and report in kPa. At 25°C, saturation vapor pressure is about 3.17 kPa; at 70% RH, VPD is 3.17 × (1 - 0.70) = 0.95 kPa. The FAO-56 reference (Allen et al., 1998) gives the canonical form.

Most commercial lettuce production targets 12 to 17 mol/m²/day; below about 10 the crop slows, and above 20 tip-burn and bolt risk rise (Both et al., 2017; Faust & Logan, 2018). Vertical-farm operators usually sit at the lower end to keep energy cost per kilo of yield down.

PPFD is an instantaneous rate (photons per square meter per second). DLI is the integral of that rate over the photoperiod, reported in mol/m²/day. PPFD answers "how much light right now?"; DLI answers "how much light all day?" -- and DLI is what crops actually integrate biologically.

Because all three are downstream of the same drivers: solar load, temperature, humidity, and how the canopy responds. A bright afternoon lifts PAR, raises PPFD, drives DLI -- and the same solar heat raises leaf temperature, which raises VPD if humidity does not track. Controlling one in isolation usually moves the others off their targets, which is why the VPD, DLI, PAR post treats them as a system, not three independent knobs.

VPD in kPa, DLI in mol/m²/day, PAR irradiance in W/m², and PPFD in µmol/m²/s where the simulator integrates the spectrum. All four are reported per hour and aggregated to daily, weekly, and seasonal summaries. The PDF report lays them side by side.

Approximate commercial targets: tomato 22 to 30 mol/m²/day, cucumber 20 to 25, strawberry 12 to 17, lettuce 12 to 17 (sources: Bertin & Heuvelink, 1993; Grange & Hand, 1987; Faust & Logan, 2018; Both et al., 2017). Per-cultivar targets vary, and the simulator's crop library carries the validated setpoints with citations attached.

Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator is pay-per-analysis: every account starts with 250 free credits on signup plus 180 refreshed every month, for free. If you need more, credit packs run from USD 15 for 250 credits up to USD 450 for 5,000 credits, with per-credit prices from USD 0.15 down to USD 0.09. Regional pricing applies at checkout (0.35x to 1.00x), so a full design run typically costs USD 2 to USD 5 in tier-3 markets. Other Gebbora products announce pricing on launch.

A credit is the unit of cost for a single Greenhouse Simulator analysis run. Most runs fall between 10 and 30 credits; the pricing page carries the formula and a few worked examples.

Greenhouse Simulator has three credit buckets, each with its own validity rule. Free monthly credits reset on the 1st of each month and do not roll over. Signup credits and promo credits expire 6 months after they are granted. Purchased credits remain valid as long as your account is active; an account inactive for 12 months will see purchased credits expire (with a one-time email reminder sent at 11 months of inactivity). The dashboard shows each bucket separately with its own expiry date.

The free tier refreshes on the 1st of each month with 180 credits. If you cannot wait, buy a pack -- purchased credits stack with the free balance, and there is no minimum or commitment.

Not currently. Credits-only keeps things simple and fair for occasional users. A subscription tier for heavy users is planned for a later phase.

Yes. Unused credits can be refunded within 14 days of purchase. Email hello@gebbora.tech or use the contact page and the team will handle it.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Maestro, JCB, Discover, Diners Club, UnionPay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, iDEAL, and Alipay -- all processed by Paddle. Card details never touch Gebbora servers.

Yes. If you need more than 5,000 credits at once, team billing, or a custom plan, email hello@gebbora.tech or use the contact page and the team will arrange it.

All credit-pack prices are listed in USD. At checkout, Paddle detects your country and applies a regional multiplier (from 0.35x to 1.00x) automatically based on World Bank income groupings. There is no selector or calculator: the price you see at checkout is the price you pay. The full per-country table lives at pricing regions.

Because most greenhouse projects need a few rigorous analyses, not a per-month subscription. Per-analysis pricing means a student running one thesis design pays USD 2 for the run, and a consultant running 50 client studies pays for what they use. No idle seats; no yearly commitment. The Introducing Gebbora post walks through the rationale.

Yes -- institutional access is available on request. Email hello@gebbora.tech or use the contact page, tell us about the program, and the team will respond.

Software priced in USD prices out a third of the planet at first contact. Gebbora applies a regional multiplier (0.35x to 1.00x) based on World Bank income groupings, so a tier-3 country pays roughly a third of the US price for the same product. The full per-country breakdown sits at pricing regions.

Paddle (the payment processor) detects the country at checkout from card-billing address and IP, and applies the matching multiplier automatically. The pricing regions page lists every country and its multiplier; if your country is not listed, the default 1.00x applies.

Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator is live worldwide: any country Paddle processes payments in (180-plus jurisdictions) can sign up, simulate, and buy credits. PVGIS climate coverage spans most of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia; Open-Meteo covers anywhere on Earth with weather-model data. Languages at v1: English, French, Arabic, Hindi.

If your country is in Paddle's supported list (most are), yes -- you can sign up and use the simulator today. Localized landing pages, additional payment rails, and language support for further markets are sequenced as demand surfaces. The contact page is the best place to flag a market we should prioritize.

Paddle handles currency conversion at checkout, so you can pay with any card or local payment method Paddle supports (Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL, Alipay, PayPal) in your local currency. The receipt shows both your local amount and the USD equivalent at the day's exchange rate.

Open sim.gebbora.app and sign up with an email and a password (Google and Apple sign-in are coming). Signup is free, no card required, and gives you 250 starting credits plus 180 refreshed every month.

250 credits on signup, plus 180 refreshed on the 1st of every month, forever. A standard design run is 10 to 30 credits, so the free tier covers several full analyses every month before any purchase is needed.

Yes. The claim credits page covers the options: a verified review on G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot; a referral; a social post; or a blog post mentioning Gebbora all earn additional credits. Submissions are reviewed within 5 working days.

Yes. Students, researchers, and academics get a verification bonus on top of the standard free tier. Apply via the claim credits page with proof of academic status (university email or ID).

Each Gebbora account is single-user today; team billing and shared seats are planned. If you need to run analyses for multiple clients in the meantime, contact the team via the contact page: consultants doing client work get supported case-by-case until team billing ships.

Inside the simulator dashboard at sim.gebbora.app. The dashboard breaks balance down by bucket (free monthly, signup, promo, purchased), shows every analysis you have run with its inputs and outputs, and links to the PDF reports you generated.

Inputs (location, greenhouse geometry, crop choice, cover material, and similar parameters) are stored against your account so you can revisit and rerun. Aggregated anonymous data (analyses-per-city counts, popular crops, popular materials) may be used to improve the platform and to show usage maps; nothing identifying is shared. Full detail in the Privacy policy.

No. Gebbora does not train AI models on user analysis data. The simulation engines are physics-based, not learned. Any AI assistance inside the product (search, support help, future natural-language input) uses Gebbora's own data, not user-private analysis content.

Only you, signed in to your Gebbora account. Gebbora staff can access an analysis only with your explicit permission (typically when helping resolve a support ticket). Analyses are not visible to other users, never indexed by search engines, and never shared with third parties. PDF reports you export are yours to share at your discretion.

Yes. Email hello@gebbora.tech (or use the contact page) with a deletion request. The team processes account and data deletions within 30 days of request, in line with GDPR rights to erasure. Backups roll off within 90 days.

Strictly-necessary cookies for session and security, plus optional analytics cookies for traffic measurement (which you can decline in the cookie banner). The full cookie inventory and durations live in the Cookie policy.

Yes. Gebbora outputs (PDF reports, screenshots, data exports) are yours to use in client deliverables, feasibility studies, investor pitches, academic theses, and similar professional work. Attribution to Gebbora is appreciated but not required. The Terms of Service carries the full license.

No. Gebbora Greenhouse Simulator is a decision-support tool: it gives rigorous physics-based outputs for a design you specify. It does not replace a licensed engineer, an agronomist, or a financial advisor. Gebbora Numbers, when it ships, will carry the same decision-support framing for financial outputs -- not advice.

The full Terms of Service covers account use, payment, refunds, liability, and intellectual property. The Privacy policy and Cookie policy cover data handling.

Email hello@gebbora.tech for general questions, or use the contact page for topic-routed enquiries (partnerships, technical support, institutional access, press). Twitter / X is @useGebbora. LinkedIn is the Gebbora company page.

General enquiries within 2 working days; technical support and refund requests within 5. Institutional and partnership conversations sometimes need a second pass through the team and may take a week.

Not yet. A user community is on the roadmap once the product surface broadens beyond the Greenhouse Simulator alone. Until then, the blog carries the platform updates and the monthly newsletter (opt-in) carries product news without spam.

Email hello@gebbora.tech with the bug report (steps to reproduce, what you expected, what happened) or the feature request (the workflow you are blocked on). The team triages weekly. Critical bugs are acknowledged the same working day.