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Solar powered lights

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Orange's Greenhouse

Active member
Travis Kelcee said:
Let me try again to explain it to you.

I live in the middle of nowhere. Neighbors and odors are not a thing for me. When we lose grid power it can take days to restore. So having a back up generator is essential to keep the lights, heat and appliances going where I live.

Most people use a portable generators or have a Generac type whole house generator installed. So they can have heat, lights, etc in the event of a blackout. We usually get a couple a year that last 24 hrs or more up to 10 days.

Portable generators are not designed to run continuously can use quite a bit of fuel.

An installed whole house generator with propane tank costs around $8k - $10k and use a lot of fuel.

My solar DIY backup generator cost around $9k, "fuel" is free.

Now if I had a portable generator or a whole house gen, using it in place of grid power to run a grow would be costly and stupid.

The same way it would be stupid not to take advantage of the free electric my DIY solar backup generator makes everyday.

Not sure why this is so hard to understand.
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Yea that makes sense but why design it to run a grow light? That is not essential and during a 5 day power outage there are higher priority tasks than growing weed.

If you look at my rough calculations regarding efficiency. At the high end you have 4 % efficiency. For 1 m² of canopy you need 25 m² solar panels. During winter 2-3 times that and if you want to compensate for cloudy days it takes another 4 times the space. That's 300 m³ at the extreme end.

So yea, it is hard to understand why anyone would turn sunlight into grow lights.
 
b8man

b8man

Well-known member
Veteran
I recently got solar in the uk so did an experiment with my last grow to see if it was viable.

With a 6kw + 5.5kw battery, I was fine doing a modest 600w grow inside powering all fans and the occasional dehumidifier. The issue is that you need to run the lights when the sun is shining with a battery that small, so you’ve got the heat of summer and the heat of the lights which isn’t ideal. If we didnt have such a mild summer I’d have had heat issues.

Saved a fair bit on electricity though.
 
Travis Kelcee

Travis Kelcee

Well-known member
✓
Orange's Greenhouse said:
Yea that makes sense but why design it to run a grow light? That is not essential and during a 5 day power outage there are higher priority tasks than growing weed.

If you look at my rough calculations regarding efficiency. At the high end you have 4 % efficiency. For 1 m² of canopy you need 25 m² solar panels. During winter 2-3 times that and if you want to compensate for cloudy days it takes another 4 times the space. That's 300 m³ at the extreme end.

So yea, it is hard to understand why anyone would turn sunlight into grow lights.
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I didn't design it to run a grow light.

For the 5th time..........I designed it to be a backup generator, because the cost was in line with a Generac and propane tank install. Where I live you need some kind of backup power if you don't want to freeze to death.

You can spend $300 on a small portable generator or around $10k for whole house generator with automatic transfer switch and a fuel tank. Portable gens are not great in prolonged grid down situations.

I've lived here 3 years and power has gone out 6 or 7 times. The longest was 3 days during an ice storm. It's a rural mountain area where it's not uncommon to get snowed in for days at a time. During mass outages we are lowest priority for power restoration.

I owned a house in Suburbia for 35 yrs and lost power 1 time for 10 hrs. So generators were not so common and I never owned one.

Now if you can wrap your head around the fact that I didn't build a solar backup gen to run grow lights.

Then maybe you can start to understand the logic in using the free electric it generates while it's just sitting there waiting to be a backup power source.
 
Porky82

Porky82

Well-known member
Travis Kelcee said:
I didn't design it to run a grow light.

For the 5th time..........I designed it to be a backup generator, because the cost was in line with a Generac and propane tank install. Where I live you need some kind of backup power if you don't want to freeze to death.

You can spend $300 on a small portable generator or around $10k for whole house generator with automatic transfer switch and a fuel tank. Portable gens are not great in prolonged grid down situations.

I've lived here 3 years and power has gone out 6 or 7 times. The longest was 3 days during an ice storm. It's a rural mountain area where it's not uncommon to get snowed in for days at a time. During mass outages we are lowest priority for power restoration.

I owned a house in Suburbia for 35 yrs and lost power 1 time for 10 hrs. So generators were not so common and I never owned one.

Now if you can wrap your head around the fact that I didn't build a solar backup gen to run grow lights.

Then maybe you can start to understand the logic in using the free electric it generates while it's just sitting there waiting to be a backup power source.
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Maybe you need to draw him a picture so he can understand. The lights appear to be on but nobody's home!
 
O

Orange's Greenhouse

Active member
Travis Kelcee said:
I didn't design it to run a grow light.

For the 5th time..........I designed it to be a backup generator, because the cost was in line with a Generac and propane tank install. Where I live you need some kind of backup power if you don't want to freeze to death.

You can spend $300 on a small portable generator or around $10k for whole house generator with automatic transfer switch and a fuel tank. Portable gens are not great in prolonged grid down situations.

I've lived here 3 years and power has gone out 6 or 7 times. The longest was 3 days during an ice storm. It's a rural mountain area where it's not uncommon to get snowed in for days at a time. During mass outages we are lowest priority for power restoration.

I owned a house in Suburbia for 35 yrs and lost power 1 time for 10 hrs. So generators were not so common and I never owned one.

Now if you can wrap your head around the fact that I didn't build a solar backup gen to run grow lights.

Then maybe you can start to understand the logic in using the free electric it generates while it's just sitting there waiting to be a backup power source.
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You asked "anyone else using solar to run their lights?"

I explained why it is dumb to do so.
 
pleaseforgive

pleaseforgive

Member
Orange's Greenhouse said:
I have a revolutionary idea: put the plants under the fucking sun.
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pretty much this
also you cannot convert 100% of the sun power into LED/HID/HPS power. why waste energy?
growers wont be flagging their locations with square kilometers of solar panels lol
how much square meters of solar panels do you need to create 100W of electric energy?
 
pleaseforgive

pleaseforgive

Member
as I said, you CANNOT convert 100%, why waste energy? just put the plant directly under sun, simple as that
why didn't you answer how much square meters of panels do you need to produce static 100W of electric power through the day time.. I guess you can generate for few hours, and if you don't store it(another loss of energy) you will end up having not enough light.. too much effort for not too good effects imho you would end up having better results running gasoline power generator than this.
 
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Ca++

Ca++

Well-known member
Interesting. I must look into this further. BRB.

I didn't mind the little biddy tiddy at all, but the package does have something wrong about it.

I must look into solar also, as I have totally neglected to. I will start with a UPS the moment I get a smart meter. I can't have a strong 12/12 impression on my usage graphs, in an illegal country. Though this feel a long way from the topic of titties.
 
Ca++

Ca++

Well-known member
pleaseforgive said:
as I said, you CANNOT convert 100%, why waste energy? just put the plant directly under sun, simple as that
why didn't you answer how much square meters of panels do you need to produce static 100W of electric power?
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Have you seen the snow on his shack. Lights in general might be seen as inefficient, but we can't all take our roofs off. In the cold like that, they are 100% efficient anyway. What's not light, is heat, which is needed.

100w 24/7?
With 4 hours to gather it (you get longer) you would need to be getting 600w. Which with 20% efficiency, is a 3kw set.
 
pleaseforgive

pleaseforgive

Member
I don't understand 24/7? Do you store the energy produced by the solar panels?
If yes, what's the efficiency of that? 50-60%?
Or you live in area where it's always sunny, 24/7 no matter what? I don't get it
wouldn't it be better to sell the energy you produce through the day to the distributor and just use how much you need?
 
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Gato420

Gato420

Well-known member
Sorry there is a lot here so I just skimmed and may have missed.

I'm assuming you are grid connected since you do have 'city' power. What arrangements did you have to make with electric co and can you possibly 'sell' them your surplus, if any?
 
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