Scheduled blackouts - I'm worried

[dave1989]

Hi guys.

The area I live in has announced, due to power plant failures, that there will be scheduled blackouts for the next few months, lasting up to 2 and a half hours at a time. So far, my plants have been okay, even with the DWC air pumps going off, but I'm about to flip them to 12/12 for flowering later today. Now, I know that during flowering, it's not a good idea to stress them at all, because they can hermie.

I'm already 1 1/2 months into a grow, so what's done is done. One advantage, is that I know quite a while in advance before they happen.

Now considering that my timer switches off when the blackouts happen, how should I go about navigating this issue? Say that hypothetically, the lights were to go out at 8 hours out of 12, stay off for 2 and a half hours, then turn back on for the rest of the 12 hours of light, what would happen? Would it be better to just leave it off for a full 12 hours when it goes off? What about if it goes off 2 hours in?

Help!

 

[Weaselcracker]

Re: Scheduled blackouts- I'm worried

Do you have digital timers? This would at least bring some bit of consistency. Manual timers will play hell with the light schedule. Where I live high winds from winter storms knock out the power regularly. In winter it's rare to go a week without some outages. Some are just blinks, some are ten hours. I haven't had problems in the flowering room though. I did have one strain growing that had hermie traits and always gave me a few nanners. But this didn't seem to change at all season to season so I don't think the power outages made the difference. Some strains are more sensitive than others.
With your blackout situation-what can you do, but hope for the best?

 

[dave1989]

Re: Scheduled blackouts- I'm worried

No I don't have digital timers.

The blackouts we get are scheduled, and none of them exceed 2 1/2 hours except for very occasionally, so at least I can plan for them. But they're regular, like 3-4 a week.

I guess there's not much I can do, except ask the question of whether it would be better to just leave the timer or to set it back to the correct time afterwards?

 

[Weaselcracker]

Re: Scheduled blackouts- I'm worried

To me it makes the most sense to set the timer back So your plants will at least have a consistent sunrise and sunset most of the time. A digital timer does that for you. No matter what weirdness goes on with the lights- the basic schedule outline stays the same.
You can't base your 12/12 schedule so the blackouts are in the night period, or are they at random times? Seems very inconvenient that they'd have them at random times.

 

[dave1989]

Re: Scheduled blackouts- I'm worried

The schedule is on a rotation for different suburbs in my city. They aren't random, but they're spread out pretty evenly so that one area doesn't get preference. That means they can, and will, come on at pretty much every hour of the day eventually.

I'm probably gonna reset the timer, but I'd love for a few others to chip in just for added reassurance if anyone here has any info/wisdom.

 

[smokeyjoejoe]

Re: Scheduled blackouts- I'm worried

I would get a digital timer as they have a battery back up inside them for up to 48 hours this will keep the time and your lighting schedule the same you don't want to keep giving them light at different times of the day as they need 100% darkness for 12 hours, you will just have to ride the power cuts out if they happen when the lights are on, even if they only get 10 hours of light and 14 of dark wont hurt them but the other way around will either revert them back to veg or the dreaded hermie plant

 

[dave1989]

Re: Scheduled blackouts- I'm worried

I don't think your logic makes much sense, because the only thing a power cut could affect is the light period. If the timer is on dark, and the power stops it, the switches won't magically flip themselves up. It'll resume it's dark period, and get a full 12 hours no matter what, albeit with an extra 1-2 1/2 hours of dark in the middle of the cycle.

I'm just going to set the timer back to the correct time when I see that it's off and hope for the best.