Looking around for data on indoor agriculture, the most relevant stuff I could find was for marijuana growing. It appears to be fantastically energy-intensive, possibly using up as much as 1% of the US's electrical energy output. Growing a kilogram of marijuana seems to require about $E=2\times10^{10}$ J of energy. Let's assume we can grow a kilogram of wheat with the same energy input. Wheat has an energy density of about $d=3400$ kcal/kg. A human needs about $c=0.02$ kcal/s of food.

The result is $cE/d\sim100$ kW of electrical power to support one human being with indoor farming. Given all the very rough order-of-magnitude assumptions involved, this seems to be roughly in line with Anthony X's estimate in a comment of 500 kW. No matter what, this is a fantastic amount of energy, dwarfing the approximately 2 kW per person used at Antarctic bases, which ship in their food.

It seems that a self-supporting space colony would do well to use sunlight, not electrical lighting, for their agriculture.

For comparison with $E\sim10^{10}$ J to grow a kg of wheat indoors, it only costs something like $5\times10^8$ J to accelerate a kg to the same velocity as the earth's orbital velocity around the sun. This suggests that if you're somewhere that doesn't have enough sunlight (surface of Titan?), you might be smart simply to import your food.

Looking around for data on indoor agriculture, the most relevant stuff I could find was for marijuana growing in High Times magazine. It appears to be fantastically energy-intensive, possibly using up as much as 1% of the US's electrical energy output. Growing a kilogram of marijuana seems to require about $E=2\times10^{10}$ J of energy. Let's assume we can grow a kilogram of wheat with the same energy input. Wheat has an energy density of about $d=3400$ kcal/kg. A human needs about $c=0.02$ kcal/s of food.

The result is $cE/d\sim100$ kW of electrical power to support one human being with indoor farming. Given all the very rough order-of-magnitude assumptions involved, this seems to be roughly in line with Anthony X's estimate in a comment of 500 kW. No matter what, this is a fantastic amount of energy, dwarfing the approximately 2 kW per person used at Antarctic bases, which ship in their food.

It seems that a self-supporting space colony would do well to use sunlight, not electrical lighting, for their agriculture.

For comparison with $E\sim10^{10}$ J to grow a kg of wheat indoors, it only costs something like $5\times10^8$ J to accelerate a kg to the same velocity as the earth's orbital velocity around the sun. This suggests that if you're somewhere that doesn't have enough sunlight (surface of Titan?), you might be smart simply to import your food.

Looking around for data on indoor agriculture, the most relevant stuff I could find was for marijuana growing. It appears to be fantastically energy-intensive, possibly using up as much as 1% of the US's electrical energy output. Growing a kilogram of marijuana seems to require about $E=2\times10^{10}$ J of energy. Let's assume we can grow a kilogram of wheat with the same energy input. Wheat has an energy density of about $d=3400$ kcal/kg. A human needs about $c=0.02$ kcal/s of food.

The result is $cE/d\sim100$ kW of electrical power to support one human being with indoor farming. Given all the very rough order-of-magnitude assumptions involved, this seems to be roughly in line with Anthony X's estimate in a comment of 500 kW. No matter what, this is a fantastic amount of energy, dwarfing the approximately 2 kW per person used at Antarctic bases, which ship in their food.

It seems that a self-supporting space colony would do well to use sunlight, not electrical lighting, for their agriculture.

Looking around for data on indoor agriculture, the most relevant stuff I could find was for marijuana growing. It appears to be fantastically energy-intensive, possibly using up as much as 1% of the US's electrical energy output. Growing a kilogram of marijuana seems to require about $E=2\times10^{10}$ J of energy. Let's assume we can grow a kilogram of wheat with the same energy input. Wheat has an energy density of about $d=3400$ kcal/kg. A human needs about $c=0.02$ kcal/s of food.

The result is $cE/d\sim100$ kW of electrical power to support one human being with indoor farming. Given all the very rough order-of-magnitude assumptions involved, this seems to be roughly in line with Anthony X's estimate in a comment of 500 kW. No matter what, this is a fantastic amount of energy, dwarfing the approximately 2 kW per person used at Antarctic bases, which ship in their food.

It seems that a self-supporting space colony would do well to use sunlight, not electrical lighting, for their agriculture.

For comparison with $E\sim10^{10}$ J to grow a kg of wheat indoors, it only costs something like $5\times10^8$ J to accelerate a kg to the same velocity as the earth's orbital velocity around the sun. This suggests that if you're somewhere that doesn't have enough sunlight (surface of Titan?), you might be smart simply to import your food.