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despisedicon
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Registered: 06/16/06
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grow lights and the electric company
#13978956 - 02/17/11 01:41 PM (12 years, 11 months ago) |
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This is not the typical question we have all heard in the past concerning energy consumption and it's fluctuation and the energy company.
My question is concerning the details on what is causing your energy consumption and it's timings. Say for example you are growing plants (legal or illegal ones) with a 1000w HPS and it comes on everyday like clock work. Does the energy company have sufficient readings to speculate on the different lighting systems?
Like, a person behind a desk can bring up your information and see you have lights that consume a lot of power and are on/off a designated schedule. 1000w go on for 12 hours then off everyday.
Or do they just get a read out of energy consumption period, that's it? I know that the vast majority of grow busts are due to snitches or a woman scorned, or large grows much more than one 1000w light. But if they could see strange timings this may lead to bored officers going through your garbage or looking into your private life more.
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Alan Rockefeller
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Re: grow lights and the electric company [Re: despisedicon]
#13979792 - 02/17/11 04:30 PM (12 years, 11 months ago) |
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Depends on your area.
Most power companies are now installing smart meters which have a radio transmitter which is always transmitting up to the minute power usage statistics to the central office. If you have a smart meter they can see if you have a 12/12 cycle.
Of course it is in the power companies best interest to not notice 12/12 cycles, so it hopefully will not be an issue as long as you keep paying the bill.
One solution to the 12/12 problem is to have 2 grow rooms 180 degrees out of phase. It would be difficult to make the transition completely smooth, unless you have some serious electrical knowledge there will be at least a blip as one grow room goes on and the other goes off. I doubt they would notice the blip. But I also doubt that power companies look for 12/12. They easily could though. If you have an old fashioned power meter they would have no insight into the 12/12 power cycle.
One way around the spike that would occur when one grow room turns on and the other goes off is to use light movers to move the lights to the next room every 12 hours. It would require some kind of curtain system to keep the light out of the adjacent room. The "spike every hour" growhouse disclosure vulnerability is completely theoretical so no need to implement that kind of thing unless people start going down for power related reasons.
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linkamathingy
Aspiring Mycologist


Registered: 10/27/10
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PG&E's SmartMeter Program Met With Concern, Doubt
"In an ideal situation, SmartMeters will be able to give home owners the ability to easily track energy usage of a refrigerator, dryer, and other appliances."
-------------------- SCIENCE!!! If NIST didn't even investigate whether explosives were used, how can we trust their investigation? It's a rule whenever explosions are heard. Though I Laugh EyegasmArt.com anonymous: without name Anonymous: a group with a name don't be fooled, have a revolution on your own terms.
Edited by linkamathingy (02/19/11 08:02 PM)
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Bacchus
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Quote:
Alan Rockefeller said: ... One solution to the 12/12 problem is to have 2 grow rooms 180 degrees out of phase. It would be difficult to make the transition completely smooth, unless you have some serious electrical knowledge there will be at least a blip as one grow room goes on and the other goes off...
Just get a relay that can handle the current drawn by your lighting setup. Put it in series with the power to the two rooms. One room goes on "Normally Closed" contacts and the other goes on "Normally Open." Put the timer on the relay's coil and you're done. You activate/deactivate the relay on a 12/12 cycle and the switching will take care of itself.
You'll have to get a little more fancy with four rooms if you want to do 18/6 with perfectly smooth current draw (for the supremely paranoid)
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Edited by Bacchus (02/19/11 08:35 PM)
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Alan Rockefeller
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Re: grow lights and the electric company [Re: Bacchus]
#13993921 - 02/20/11 02:01 AM (12 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Bacchus said: Just get a relay that can handle the current drawn by your lighting setup. Put it in series with the power to the two rooms. One room goes on "Normally Closed" contacts and the other goes on "Normally Open." Put the timer on the relay's coil and you're done. You activate/deactivate the relay on a 12/12 cycle and the switching will take care of itself.
Even with a relay, the current draw would not be completely smooth because the ballasts take a different amount of current when they are just starting up as they do when they are running. However they would probably never notice the little blip and it would be infinately stealthier than 12 on, 12 off.
That would have to be one hell of a heavy duty relay to run a grow room. They don't often make them that large and the contacts would not last long due to the heavy current flow.
A better device to use for high power AC switching is a triac.
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Stonehenge
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Back in the day when i use to grow (don't anymore) i used contactors. You can't get them in home depot but electrical supply stores have them or on ebay. They are basically high current switches or solenoids. I still have some rated at 20 amps inductive, i should put them on my trade list. 20 amp inductive is about equal to 30 amps resistive. HID lights are inductive as are motors and pumps. You don't want a light weight timer handling even a 400w light let alone the bigger ones or banks of lights.
You can use a light weight cheap timer to control the contactors and they in turn control the heavy current. So yes, it would be easy to have one set of lights go off the same time another set goes on. Simply have one set of lights hooked to normally on contacts and the other set hooked to normally closed. I have that on my contactors too. When the contactor is "on" the normally closed are open and are off and the normally open are closed and passing current to the lights. When the contactor is "off" then the normally open, open and those lights go out and the normally closed can now close turning on the other set. You can have a number of contactors controlled by one timer.
Another factor is that the lights on during the day might need air conditioning which would require a lot of current. In the winter, the plants might need heat at night. Air conditioners need to be controlled by a contactor too and are considered inductive. An example of resistive would be an electric heater.
-------------------- “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” (attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville political philosopher Circa 1835) Trade list http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/18047755
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argg
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Registered: 07/20/09
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Quote:
Alan Rockefeller said:
Quote:
Bacchus said: Just get a relay that can handle the current drawn by your lighting setup. Put it in series with the power to the two rooms. One room goes on "Normally Closed" contacts and the other goes on "Normally Open." Put the timer on the relay's coil and you're done. You activate/deactivate the relay on a 12/12 cycle and the switching will take care of itself.
Even with a relay, the current draw would not be completely smooth because the ballasts take a different amount of current when they are just starting up as they do when they are running. However they would probably never notice the little blip and it would be infinately stealthier than 12 on, 12 off.
That would have to be one hell of a heavy duty relay to run a grow room. They don't often make them that large and the contacts would not last long due to the heavy current flow.
A better device to use for high power AC switching is a triac.
they can be made and work well. I have a home made panel that flips 8 600 watt ballasts.They flip flop 2 lights per ballasts just flipping the hots to the lamps. The voltage is high going to the lamps so you need a relay or contactor that will handle the higher voltage.
I just took a large panel I pulled from scrap and mounted 8 600 watt ballasts in it then all relays are wired to 16 sunsystem plugs sidemounted. The timer is a panel mount intermatic. There are separate switches for power to each ballast in case I want a few off for any reason.
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Stonehenge
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Re: grow lights and the electric company [Re: argg]
#14000035 - 02/21/11 08:59 AM (12 years, 11 months ago) |
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argg, it seems needlessly complicated to switch the output between the ballasts and the lamps. You would have to deal with higher voltage as you said. It sounds like you leave the ballasts on all the time. That will waste electricity since they do draw some current when on even when not connected to the lamp.
The way i did it was put the contactor in a 3 gang junction box with one end of an extension cord used to connect to the power and the other end giving the output. Then there was a cord that went to the timer. That way they could all be remote. Mounting all those ballasts to a panel will make it super heavy and concentrate the heat in one area. It can work but i say k.i.s.s.
-------------------- “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” (attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville political philosopher Circa 1835) Trade list http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/18047755
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