Power outages affect on plants?

[Bud Good]

It's getting to be that time of year for me, when every gust of wind or flake of snow makes the power go out. It's not unusual to go a couple hours without power, that will happen about once per month. Most of the time it's just long enough to reset clocks. But do I have anything to worry about with my plants, other than missing out on some grow time and having to reset the timers?

I could get a good true sine wave UPS. I also have a *modified* sine wave power inverter, gas generator, some deep cycle batteries, and the know-how to put them together to make an UPS with generator backup. Will the modified sine wave mess with either my LED controller or the ballasts in my T5s?

 

[jhfhklsnhfldk]

If it's just a few hours it should not have much affect. It would be much worse for the lights to come on during the dark cycle than having the lights go off for a while in your light cycle. This happened to me about a month ago and the power was down for about 3 hours. I did have to reset my timer though.

 

[Bud Good]

If it's just a few hours it should not have much affect. It would be much worse for the lights to come on during the dark cycle than having the lights go off for a while in your light cycle. This happened to me about a month ago and the power was down for about 3 hours. I did have to reset my timer though.

I did a little more thinking on the subject, and the following situation occurred to me: My flower timer will be on for 11 hours 45 minutes. The power goes out for 8 or 10 hours (which has happened in a couple blizzards) and the plants "think" it's night. The power comes back on and the lights come on for 15 minutes and go back out. Wouldn't that be the same as turning the lights on in the middle of the dark period?

 

[iwltfum]

In veg, none of this really matters (at least in terms of the plants reacting less or more light). In bloom however, the power going out for a couple hours generally isn't a big deal for the plants, when it comes back on is a different story. If it comes back on in the middle of your regular dark cycle and the lights are still switched to on, then you need to deal with that immediately. That could confuse your ladies.

On the electrical side: Since you're using led and t5, I would plug your electronics into decent surge protectors (not the cheapo kind) and they will be fine. Otherwise, you could have some ballast issues. I had t5 and magnetic ballasts go out on me during a power outage when I lived up in the mountains of CO to the tune of about 3grand in damages and the electric company did nothing to compensate me. So plug into those outlets at your own risk! Best of luck to ya.

tfum