St. Phatty
Active member
I run my lights on 11 1/2 on // 12 1/2 off hour cycles.
Without me doing anything to sync the lights, the 400 watt comes on first in the morning. The 1000 watt comes on 15 minutes later, then goes off 15 minutes later.
I was wondering about folks that have a lot of lights (and big power bills) - is there any incentive to run the lights in an "alternating staggered" pattern ?
Let's say we diagram the light layout like this -
xoxo
oxox
xoxo
to show the lay-out for a 4 x 3 light set-up.
If you set the 'x' lights to go 6 AM to 5 PM (11 hours)
and the 'o' lights to go 7 AM to 6 PM (also 11 hours)
Then the 'x' lights get the "gradual sunset" treatment
from 5 PM to 6 PM.
Similar for the 'o' lights in the AM. They get "side-light"
from the lights nearby.
So the Question is - how much do you lose in terms of Quantity or Quality if you do a set-up like that ?
Is there an 'industry term' for what I'm calling an "alternating staggered" pattern ?
My guess is, some strains can deal with it better than others.
From experience working in large production facilities, I understand cost-cutting. My guess is, maybe, some growers somewhere are doing related calculations.
Basically, the marginal utility of the extra hour (measured in Quantity & Quality & strain name) would be compared to the cost savings.
I know a lot of times, people would be like, "just pay the power bill". But since that is stealth related, and since power companies tend to charge more for more usage, I figure there's sort of an incentive to use 11/13 lighting in an 'alternating staggered' type pattern.
But I don't feel like setting up a 6 or 12 light grow to find out
Without me doing anything to sync the lights, the 400 watt comes on first in the morning. The 1000 watt comes on 15 minutes later, then goes off 15 minutes later.
I was wondering about folks that have a lot of lights (and big power bills) - is there any incentive to run the lights in an "alternating staggered" pattern ?
Let's say we diagram the light layout like this -
xoxo
oxox
xoxo
to show the lay-out for a 4 x 3 light set-up.
If you set the 'x' lights to go 6 AM to 5 PM (11 hours)
and the 'o' lights to go 7 AM to 6 PM (also 11 hours)
Then the 'x' lights get the "gradual sunset" treatment
from 5 PM to 6 PM.
Similar for the 'o' lights in the AM. They get "side-light"
from the lights nearby.
So the Question is - how much do you lose in terms of Quantity or Quality if you do a set-up like that ?
Is there an 'industry term' for what I'm calling an "alternating staggered" pattern ?
My guess is, some strains can deal with it better than others.
From experience working in large production facilities, I understand cost-cutting. My guess is, maybe, some growers somewhere are doing related calculations.
Basically, the marginal utility of the extra hour (measured in Quantity & Quality & strain name) would be compared to the cost savings.
I know a lot of times, people would be like, "just pay the power bill". But since that is stealth related, and since power companies tend to charge more for more usage, I figure there's sort of an incentive to use 11/13 lighting in an 'alternating staggered' type pattern.
But I don't feel like setting up a 6 or 12 light grow to find out
