Power Outage

[Red Eye Jedi]

As some of you may know, we in Southern California have been having power outages all over the place. Unfortunately I was one of those affected. Here's the situation.

My plant was 1 week into flowering (12/12 - 12 AM lights on, 12 PM lights off), and on friday night at 9:00 PM the power went out. This was during the plant's dark phase, so the first 3 hours were OK. Little did I know the power would be out until Monday afternoon...I couldn't take the plant outside, so I left it in complete darkness during this time. When the power came back on, around 1:05 I set it to 12 hours light, until 1:05 AM. The plant looked fine, with little sign of stress. Then, to re-set my previous lighting schedule, I kept it in complete darkness from 1:05 AM till 12 AM the next day..Another 23 hours in complete dark. May I have shocked my plant into being a hermi or a male?

PS I'm using compact fluorescents to be energy efficient.

 

[RooRman]

Typically, it is overdoing the light, not overdoing the dark, that makes the plant turn hermi. Although none of this was good for the plant, it doesn't sound like it will hurt it extensively. I would resume your normal 12/12 light shcedule as soon as possible and pay very close attention to how the plant reacts.

 

[Fifibobo]

Why not get a UPS? I use these for my servers at home & it's not too hard to modify the system so you can hook everything through. I personally don't suffer from outages to any extent (more for spikes with regards to servers), but I have a friend who stays in the sticks & is affected by outages quite often, so this is how he sorted this. You can pick them up dirt cheap & at least it will give you some time..........just a thought.

 

[Urdedpal]

UPS?
DOWNS?
What is a ups?

 

[XLE420]

As some of you may know, we in Southern California have been having power outages all over the place. Unfortunately I was one of those affected. Here's the situation.

I was thinking about that when my girlfriends power went out. I thought 'damn, that would suck if anyone had an indoor grow and doesn't have a generator or any sort of battery back up system.'

Didn't something like a million Edison customers lose power over the last 3-6(?) days? It gets hot then those transformers start messing up and then bye-bye power.

Go solar. Just get enough solar power for your grow room. Get like the solar panels for a swimming pool heater. Wire them in to be your eletrical outlets in your grow room. Drop it from the attic/crawlspace through the rooms ceiling. But you also need it set up to be able to switch to your regular, hardline fed power for those dark days. That or have it store all the extra power in batterys. Now the cost on the other hand..

Good luck with your plants!

 

[Fifibobo]

UPS?

What is a ups?

A UPS is an Uninterruptable Power Supply. It's basically a battery backup which will kick in when the power cuts out. APC's website is a good place to start. I use a 1000 Smart UPS.

 

[RooRman]

A UPS is an Uninterruptable Power Supply. It's basically a battery backup which will kick in when the power cuts out. APC's website is a good place to start. I use a 1000 Smart UPS.

How long do they last? I had one for my computer, it only supplied power for 15 minutes after a power failure. Just enought time to save your work and shut it down. What kind of battery life does yours have? I imagine it needs to be at least an hours worth to be practical.

 

[Fifibobo]

How long do you want it to last? The more you want, there will be a model. Mine will keep 2 PC's & monitors up for at least an hour. I use an APC Symmetra system at work which keeps the Callcentre up for 2 hours - 100 PC's & 5 racks of servers.

You can keep the actual unit itself in another room & feed cabling through into grow room, keeping clutter & heat down. Just felt mine & it's very cool, no heat generated really, but I imagine if it's under a load, it will generate heat.

Hope this helps. Just an idea that may benefit someone.

 

[RooRman]

Sounds like you have a good setup. Do you have alot of power outages? This is the only way I could see something like this being practical. Good idea though.

 

[Fifibobo]

Don't actually suffer from outages so much - it's more for spikes etc. It's also like a big surge protector. It's purpose is more for resilience & isn't needed too often.

 

[Damagoman]

Don't actually suffer from outages so much - it's more for spikes etc. It's also like a big surge protector. It's purpose is more for resilience & isn't needed too often.

UPS is to give you time to bring down your systems Softly
instead of jerkin' the power off them.

GenSet(Generator) would be best
and it won't be too out of the ordinary during an outage.

Liked that Solar option may have to at that one for dayToday ops.


Dark outage isn't too bad ...
just throws off production schedules.

Now stuck on ... pray and watch..
Had a timer stick on for a few days before anybody found it.
Just starting to harvest the ones effected in a perpetual grow ...
hard to tell what effect it had, what with the friggin' heat the way it is.

 

[Fifibobo]

UPS is to give you time to bring down your systems Softly
instead of jerkin' the power off them.

On smaller UPS systems, yes, this is the case. I use mine, as stated, for spikes etc. A good UPS nowadays will give enough power to do more than just get your system downed. The big Symmetra I administer will run a call centre for 2 hours, during that time a generator will be called out. No downtime; no need to bring anything down. In businesses today, you will rarely find a UPS that's sole use is to bring the system down in time - used to be case, but not anymore AFAIC as Business Continuity & Resilience are more & more important in todays climate.

Just my view.