How many of you can still afford to grow under lights?

JoetheChro said:
I’m using the HPS exhaust to heat the rest of my flat/apartment. It’s paying for itself. Would cost me more to run the radiators every night.

It’s tough but might as well be warm, getting weed and spending a bit of money on lecky rather than spend a bit of money and just be warm. And then more money on bud.

But a kilowatt of energy nearly doubled in price in 18 months. That’s going to be hard for anyone. I’ve gone from 2 lights to 1 and a smaller tent.

UK in weird limbo at the moment. It’s a bit like Benny Hill with the political comings and goings. We got told there would be a price cap in place for April and then got told no. It is set to almost double again.

I’m trying to get as much done as I can now in the colder months. That’s if we don’t get blackouts, but hopefully just Daily Mail scare mongering 😂

Where abouts in Europe are you if you don’t mind me asking?
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Hi JoetheChro, sounds like things are a bit crazy in the UK right now and looks like you might be getting your old PM back again, lets hope not.
Would rather not be specific about location but its in the same latitude as the UK so we dont see much sun either even in the summer months and even before the present crisis we were already paying through the nose for electricity all thanks to europe's seeming determination to transition to "green energy". Things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.
 
aphrodisia said:
Hi JoetheChro, sounds like things are a bit crazy in the UK right now and looks like you might be getting your old PM back again, lets hope not.
Would rather not be specific about location but its in the same latitude as the UK so we dont see much sun either even in the summer months and even before the present crisis we were already paying through the nose for electricity all thanks to europe's seeming determination to transition to "green energy". Things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.
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Lol on the PM comment. Let’s hope not indeed 🙏
 
JoetheChro said:
I didn’t mean it like that, more that laws should be changed so that doesn’t happen. It’s like prohibition, it’s only encouraging it

It makes sense to do it, why legalise a little when it should be a lot?

Admittedly I’m in a place where the laws are the same all over the land. A lot less confusion. Weed is bad. I try and have that mantra going on in my head so I don’t slip up 😂

But 3 months into the medical weed. My new dealer is the UK government. They’re not disappointing 😂😂
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There's no confusion.. them laws are illegal 😂 one is a being on this ball hurtling around the sun through the cosmos.. and there's people that go, these things that grow here and there (the few vines and herbs on this planet that might actually let you cope and help understand this wild galactic ride) are illegal and you can't have it! The correct response to that is oh, piss off! and become an ethnobotanist :D
 
They act like they've done us a massive favour. Oh you've reduced my bill from astronomical to unmanageable. Well done dickheads. I think they're cutting the price guarantee off earlier than originally planned now too. Cheers. The figures in the right column are actually about what it used to cost before things went mental.
Screenshot_20221022-093809.png
 
VetSmoke85 said:
They act like they've done us a massive favour. Oh you've reduced my bill from astronomical to unmanageable. Well done dickheads. I think they're cutting the price guarantee off earlier than originally planned now too. Cheers. The figures in the right column are actually about what it used to cost before things went mental.
Screenshot_20221022-093809.png
Click to expand...
Yes, and from what I understand prices are going up again this coming January, how the hell do they expect people to cope ?
 
aphrodisia said:
Yes, and from what I understand prices are going up again this coming January, how the hell do they expect people to cope ?
Click to expand...
They don't appear to know or care. Too busy infighting and trying to advance their positions. While all the citizens they're supposed to be working for suffer.
 
VetSmoke85 said:
They act like they've done us a massive favour. Oh you've reduced my bill from astronomical to unmanageable. Well done dickheads. I think they're cutting the price guarantee off earlier than originally planned now too. Cheers. The figures in the right column are actually about what it used to cost before things went mental.
Screenshot_20221022-093809.png
Click to expand...


VetSmoke85 said:
looks like a nightmare :oops:
Click to expand...
 
Energy definitely has gotten expensive over the years for sure.. when I started growinging I had 3 tents, one with 1000w HID, one with 800w HID and one with 400w HID and my bill was around $350 a month... this was about 10-15 years ago..

Now I run 2 tents with LED's and purposely run them at 1/2 wattage due to costs, so in one tent its about 300w and the other tent about 240w... and my bill is about $250 a month... it definitely has gotten quite expensive to run lights...

Here are a few tips I suggest for lightening the Cost of electricity when growing...

First off, common sense.. growing up with depression raised grandparents, it was inbedded in my head to turn the lights off when I leave a room... and that still applies.. Turn off lights, appliances and other electrical devices when you are not using them.

Hook electrical devices up to power strips with switches... a lot of devices like smart TVs, video game systems, computers, radios... all use power even when in "off" or standby mode. If you can flip the switch and turn them completely off at the power bar, it will cut your electricity usage quite a bit.

Buy a fan speed controller.... These things go for under 20$ and will save you much more... There really is no reason to run these 400CFM fans at full speed unless you absolutely have to for temperature control. I run all of my inline fans on speed controllers at around 30% speed and it does its job fine on extracting heat and providing good enough air exchange, and saves me roughly 70% of the electricity that it normally would on full speed.

In Veg.. Dim you lights.... Vegging plants rarely need full power 100% lights... I won't go into a long explaination but think of a plant like an empty bucket and the light photons like water... during a 24 hour period a plant only needs 1 bucket full of photons/water, so under 12 hour light, you need more "rate of flow" of light photons/water to fill the bucket where as if you ran the light photons for 18 hours (veg) you don't need as much rate of flow of photons/water to fill that same bucket, it could be more like a slower trickle. Plants work just like this and only can use a certain amount of photons per day... Therefore in veg, lower your intensity of your lights aka dial down the power and run them at 50% or less and lower the lights closer to the plants... This will provide tremendous savings and really wont affect the plants growth that much. In flower definitely you want to bump up the power, but in veg... Save that money! You also could do the 12-1 or Gas Lantern Routine/night inturruption method, in which you are only using 13 hours of light to veg plants. Some strains don't like this method much, but most of them I've used it with were perfectly normal.

See if your power company has "discount rate" hours or hours that are Peak hours. Where I live, there are peak hours in which the rates skyrocket. At these times, all of my tents are off completely except for the extraction fans. I run my lights during the cheaper power times when the rates are lower and this significantly saves me money.

Run your plants at night or cooler hours vs running them during the day. My plants daytime starts around 9pm and they run through the night while I sleep. Since where I live the summers are extremely hot and I dont have AC, I am at the mercy of the outside temps variations inside my place. By running the lights during the cool evenings, nights and mornings, it doesn't heat up my house that much, and I don't have to run extra room fans, ceiling fans and swamp coolers to make it tolerable in my house. During the hottest hours of the day, the lights are off so I am not adding to the already hot environment, involving less house fans running.

Hopefully these tips help... I have extremely high prices on electricity and its gone up a ton over the years... I use all of these techniques to cut my costs as much as possible and really the plants are all healthy and so is my wallet :)
 
Good tips on saving electricity around the house but cutting back on lighting your plants will reduce your yield as well as your crop quality and will save very little money.

We know this because researchers have shown that there is a direct relationship between the amount of light cannabis receives and plant yield, plant morphology, crop yield, and crop quality. Refer to "Cannabis Yield, Potency, and Leaf Photosynthesis Respond Differently to Increasing Light Levels in an Indoor Environment". Based on the yield curve published in that document, yield increases about 4.5% for every 50 µmols increase in PPFD.

Second, reducing power draw for a grow light will save energy but the cannabis is an extremely high value crop so the cost savings enjoyed by cutting back on lighting are tiny compared to the decrease in value of the crop. My rates here in Southern California are 31¢ per KwH from 2000 to 1600 and 64¢ per KwH from 1600 to 2000. My grow is in a 2' x 4' tent and, at the moment, I have three lights running 63, 183, and 204 watts. I run them on a 20/4 cycle, shutting them off for the peak period. Those lights consume 450 watts or (450*20)/1000 = 9 KwH per day = 270 KwH over 30 days. Even at the obscene prices here in the People's Republic, that's only $83.70 for an entire month. If I cut my grow light wattage in half, that would reduce my yield by almost 50% and would save me about $42. I can't agree that's a "tremendous" amount of money and cutting my crop yield almost in half for that amount doesn't seem like a good decision from where I sit.
 
Delps8 said:
Good tips on saving electricity around the house but cutting back on lighting your plants will reduce your yield as well as your crop quality and will save very little money.

We know this because researchers have shown that there is a direct relationship between the amount of light cannabis receives and plant yield, plant morphology, crop yield, and crop quality. Refer to "Cannabis Yield, Potency, and Leaf Photosynthesis Respond Differently to Increasing Light Levels in an Indoor Environment". Based on the yield curve published in that document, yield increases about 4.5% for every 50 µmols increase in PPFD.

Second, reducing power draw for a grow light will save energy but the cannabis is an extremely high value crop so the cost savings enjoyed by cutting back on lighting are tiny compared to the decrease in value of the crop. My rates here in Southern California are 31¢ per KwH from 2000 to 1600 and 64¢ per KwH from 1600 to 2000. My grow is in a 2' x 4' tent and, at the moment, I have three lights running 63, 183, and 204 watts. I run them on a 20/4 cycle, shutting them off for the peak period. Those lights consume 450 watts or (450*20)/1000 = 9 KwH per day = 270 KwH over 30 days. Even at the obscene prices here in the People's Republic, that's only $83.70 for an entire month. If I cut my grow light wattage in half, that would reduce my yield by almost 50% and would save me about $42. I can't agree that's a "tremendous" amount of money and cutting my crop yield almost in half for that amount doesn't seem like a good decision from where I sit.
Click to expand...
Cutting light during VEG will NOT reduce yields or quality. Plants used light based on MOL/Day of photons. This is the same reason that the recommend PPFD for veg is around 500 and for flowering around 1000, longer days require less photons per hour... the study you used even says that the plants were all vegged at 425 mol and the flowering rate is what was changed in the study. I specifically said in veg. Plants under 18 or 20 hours of light do not need nearly the intensity of plants in 12/12 flowering. Look at the calculation for DLI for cannabis and break it down to Umols/m2/s-1 for 20 hours vs 12 hours... in addition I suggested also dimming and LOWERING the lights which increases the intensity at the appical meristem.

Cutting all areas counts towards savings, 42$ here, 10$ here, 5$ on something else all add up to savings... Cause not being able to afford to grow yields Notta...
 
Icemud said:
Energy definitely has gotten expensive over the years for sure.. when I started growinging I had 3 tents, one with 1000w HID, one with 800w HID and one with 400w HID and my bill was around $350 a month... this was about 10-15 years ago..

Now I run 2 tents with LED's and purposely run them at 1/2 wattage due to costs, so in one tent its about 300w and the other tent about 240w... and my bill is about $250 a month... it definitely has gotten quite expensive to run lights...

Here are a few tips I suggest for lightening the Cost of electricity when growing...

First off, common sense.. growing up with depression raised grandparents, it was inbedded in my head to turn the lights off when I leave a room... and that still applies.. Turn off lights, appliances and other electrical devices when you are not using them.

Hook electrical devices up to power strips with switches... a lot of devices like smart TVs, video game systems, computers, radios... all use power even when in "off" or standby mode. If you can flip the switch and turn them completely off at the power bar, it will cut your electricity usage quite a bit.

Buy a fan speed controller.... These things go for under 20$ and will save you much more... There really is no reason to run these 400CFM fans at full speed unless you absolutely have to for temperature control. I run all of my inline fans on speed controllers at around 30% speed and it does its job fine on extracting heat and providing good enough air exchange, and saves me roughly 70% of the electricity that it normally would on full speed.

In Veg.. Dim you lights.... Vegging plants rarely need full power 100% lights... I won't go into a long explaination but think of a plant like an empty bucket and the light photons like water... during a 24 hour period a plant only needs 1 bucket full of photons/water, so under 12 hour light, you need more "rate of flow" of light photons/water to fill the bucket where as if you ran the light photons for 18 hours (veg) you don't need as much rate of flow of photons/water to fill that same bucket, it could be more like a slower trickle. Plants work just like this and only can use a certain amount of photons per day... Therefore in veg, lower your intensity of your lights aka dial down the power and run them at 50% or less and lower the lights closer to the plants... This will provide tremendous savings and really wont affect the plants growth that much. In flower definitely you want to bump up the power, but in veg... Save that money! You also could do the 12-1 or Gas Lantern Routine/night inturruption method, in which you are only using 13 hours of light to veg plants. Some strains don't like this method much, but most of them I've used it with were perfectly normal.

See if your power company has "discount rate" hours or hours that are Peak hours. Where I live, there are peak hours in which the rates skyrocket. At these times, all of my tents are off completely except for the extraction fans. I run my lights during the cheaper power times when the rates are lower and this significantly saves me money.

Run your plants at night or cooler hours vs running them during the day. My plants daytime starts around 9pm and they run through the night while I sleep. Since where I live the summers are extremely hot and I dont have AC, I am at the mercy of the outside temps variations inside my place. By running the lights during the cool evenings, nights and mornings, it doesn't heat up my house that much, and I don't have to run extra room fans, ceiling fans and swamp coolers to make it tolerable in my house. During the hottest hours of the day, the lights are off so I am not adding to the already hot environment, involving less house fans running.

Hopefully these tips help... I have extremely high prices on electricity and its gone up a ton over the years... I use all of these techniques to cut my costs as much as possible and really the plants are all healthy and so is my wallet :)
Click to expand...
The cost of 1 Killowatt hour of electricity in germany is now $0.46 and $0.48 in denmark and is further set to rise in the new year, I was already setting my lights to come on at night before anyway to maximize on savings but in the present circumstances its just a no go for me and my wife would definitely have something to say about it if I even so much as look at my grow tent, good thing I have enough reserves for the time being but it was also a hobby for me.
 
I am preparing to downsize for my next run and if the prices are still prohibitive in Spring I may well do autos 12/12 from seed - done it before and managed +/- 40-50g/plant under a 120w switched LED; 60w veg, 120w flower

Let's assume average draw is 100w over the period
100w x 12 hrs = 1.2kwh
1.2kwh x 100 days = 120Kwh
120Kwh x £0.35/unit = £42 for the grow [plus fans etc] or £14 per month

That's manageable, about 5% of my overall bill - just don't use the fan oven :cool:
 
aphrodisia said:
The cost of 1 Killowatt hour of electricity in germany is now $0.46 and $0.48 in denmark and is further set to rise in the new year, I was already setting my lights to come on at night before anyway to maximize on savings but in the present circumstances its just a no go for me and my wife would definitely have something to say about it if I even so much as look at my grow tent, good thing I have enough reserves for the time being but it was also a hobby for me.
Click to expand...
Again vs buying weed?
certainly in Germany, I'm sure things have improved but my recollection was whenever I blazed up over there people would flock! And offer absurd things for just a nugget of Nederwiet..
I've just checked, I'm growing 140watt led.. 6weeks at 18hrs.. 9weeks at 12hrs.. both are 756 light hours so 1512hrs..
140watt at 1512hrs is 212kwh.. rounded up. 212 x 0,46 = 97,52$ add maybe another 30-40 for the fans and a bit more for the soil & nutrients.. still
If I had to buy what I grew for that.. it be more like 1750-2500 euros 😕
 
Fenderbender said:
Again vs buying weed?
certainly in Germany, I'm sure things have improved but my recollection was whenever I blazed up over there people would flock! And offer absurd things for just a nugget of Nederwiet..
I've just checked, I'm growing 140watt led.. 6weeks at 18hrs.. 9weeks at 12hrs.. both are 756 light hours so 1512hrs..
140watt at 1512hrs is 212kwh.. rounded up. 212 x 0,46 = 97,52$ add maybe another 30-40 for the fans and a bit more for the soil & nutrients.. still
If I had to buy what I grew for that.. it be more like 1750-2500 euros 😕
Click to expand...
Exactly
 

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