My plants are still young, a few weeks old. We've had two power outages today, both lasting a couple hours while my lights were on. What will a few hours of random darkness do to my plants if they're used to having light at those times??
Like iwltfum said when it comes back on leave them on
I assume these are vegging
You can leave them on for 24 hrs a day if it was me I would leave them on until my next reg set time ON then turn my timer back on so to get them back on the day/night sched I want
So say your power has been off for 10 hrs ,of their sched 18 hrs ON, I would leave them on for 32 straight hours
Hope that makes sense
They will be fine
As long as the plants regularly get at least 14 hours of light per day there's no need to take any action. There's no need to alter your light schedule over this if it happened once, for 8 hours as you say. If it happens more frequently you run the risk of the plants blooming but ONLY if they get under 14 hours of light consistently. Just get back to the 18/6 schedule (or whatever you've been using) and the plants will stay in veg. I don't recommend going 24/7 because studies don't prove that this has any benefit, plus you're increasing your electricity bill and depriving the plants of their necessary dark period.
So... I happen to suffer fairly frequent power outages.
When I get hit by one, I drag out my inverter, hook it to my car battery, and run just minimal lighting (~100w CF) to maintain the light cycle. CF will run many hours from a car battery and when it runs down, I just start the car and let it run for a while to recharge the batteries. Inverters are fairly cheap... much cheaper than a generator.
I find it to be a quick and easy answer to power challenges.