Renewed Energy Grow Room

Hey RIU, I have posted this on my journal also but I feel that it isn't getting the attention it deserves so copy and paste time. The idea of a renewed energy grow room would be amazing to see fulfilled. Read on everyone

This ones a doozy so hold on to your bubblers.

An all green closet grow or shed grow, whatever works. It is a simple concept, everything that can be made out of recycled materials, is. So your hood for your light is old pop cans riveted and layered for maximum heat retention and reflectivity. The air tube for your light is made out of 2 liters hot glued together. And most importantly, the entire grow room is run on renewable energy like air and solar. So if you have one 1kw light, and a 40w fan, you would need to be able to produce that per hour.

That is slightly misleading, you would not really need to produce that every hour because the room would actually run on batteries and the batteries would be filled up by the renewable energy. So on any windy day or sunny day, you can save up enough energy to power your room for a week.

The only downside to this idea, is the extremely high start up cost. Mainly due to the market being flooded with overpriced turbines with horrible reviews due to being cheap or not generating required power. So on the low side, for a decent workable pair of turbines, you are looking at about $1,000 for a solar panel, you are looking at about $300.

For your light, I have never bought one but it seems to stay in the 200-500 range for a 1kw light.

Cheap fan is negligible

Last and definitely not least, the batteriessss.
I have no idea how much batteries cost, but I am assuming a normal car battery runs about $100 bones. We are probably looking to have at least 3-5 of them running in a separate room(due to heat)

Then seeds and soil is on a person to person basis so it is being left out of the total.


Energy source: $1,300
Lights: $600
Batteries: $500

Total Green House Cost: $2400

Expensive but manageable

Compared to just buying a green house, it is a little pricey, but you get a electric bill free grow room that you can brag all over RIU with.

Peace & Pot Errbody, anyone wanna lend me $2400 dollars?

Anything else you guys think should be included please feel free to chime in, this one needs some improvement.

I was thinking about buying solar panels & the rest of the equipment needed to power my indoor grow have it ever been done?

I have never seen it, but I would like to see the practicality of it. Also, this is great if you are prone to power outages! I am sure you could even adapt this to work with hydroponics systems

yeaaaaaah..... apperantly yall dont know much about the cost of thigns in real life.... i would double that nmumber before your even close to the desired outcome. in fact, i think you would be hard pressed to find a kilowatt solar panel for under 5g's. then you need to invert all taht batterie power to AC which is another 1000$ item. batteries for "green home" energy banks are more like 250$ a pop and you need dozens to be effective. consider that a 1 kw solar panel generates on average 500 - 800 watts. unless you live in the desert.

not to rain on your parade or nothing, i love the idea, just not realistic. consider that if you make your home use renewable energy sources it takes 7 to 10 years before you see the savings.

just like if you buy a prius for 25g's vs a camry for 15g's it'll take atleast 5 years before you save that 10g difference with the cost of gas.

unfortunatly, like most new markets, renewable energy is flooded with poor products, and high coost products, and still no truly efficent and innovative technologies.

Once calculated, it's not so suprising that the researchers choose not to write these figures down. In the best case scenario, one square meter of solar cells carries a burden of 75 kilograms of CO2. In the worst case scenario, that becomes 314 kilograms of CO2. With a solar insolation of 1,700 kWh/m²/yr an average household needs 8 to 10 square meters of solar panels, with a solar insolation of 900 kWh/m²/yr this becomes 16 to 20 square meters. Which means that the total CO2 debt of a solar installation is 600 to 3,140 kilograms of CO2 in sunny places, and 1,200 to 6,280 kilograms of CO2 in less sunny regions. These numbers equate to 2 to 20 flights Brussels-Lissabon (up and down, per passenger) - source CO2 emissions Boeing 747.

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Not raining on my parade at all, it is good to see a realistic price range. Keep in mind, we are not running a house. No where near the power a house takes, but I see your point.

I have to admit, I wasn't looking at this for practicality or to save a person money. It was more if you can do it why not save the environment a little.

If anyone can come up with a realistic number all things included that would be nice because obviously amazons prices aren't realistic

Off to work lol Peace & Pot Errbody

yeah i hear yah, i'd love to find an easy option to cut my electricity bill a bit. stealing it aint an option, growing outdoors is too risky, greenhouses are too obvious.... tough to catch a break in this life o' crime.

well, were not all criminals, you guys in the medical states are lucky!

why not just run fans and sir pumps u should be able to power that on solar it will cut cost slightly i seen a video with a guy had a thermostat hook to a 12 volt battery and had a fan hook up as well when the tem rose the fan turn on might be a cheap way of cooling and moving air u can run pc fans as well i been reading on this stuff want to test out the harbor freight kit just need to come up on a gel type battery

Check with the state and fed gov and see what you can get back from them for going eco. Hell, they use us why not use them? lol

WWDave said:

Check with the state and fed gov and see what you can get back from them for going eco. Hell, they use us why not use them? lol

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HAHA that would be the cherry on the sundae. gettiing tax credits for having a "greener" grow room

5 car batteries will barely light a 100watt lightbulb for a week....if someone was to do this and acctually store the energy in case it had to last a whole week, you are talking thousands of dollars in commercial batteries IE. Electric fork lift batteries if not something bigger. Just move to a house thats on a river that never freezes and has a good flow and setup a hydro turbine...lol. The river never stops moving light or dark windy or not. plus you can put a net on the back of your turbine, catch fish and eat for free the rest of your life.

i have solar panels.
it makes enough energy to run the house and garden and still get me a cheque at the end of every year from the power company for excess i created

Fresh fish is where it is at! But I have to slightly disagree with your statement Politely of course and as always, prove me wrong please! I have done some research and seen entire homes run on solar and a room full of about 10 deep cycle batteries.

If you can constantly refill the batteries, why would size matter?

a more realistic start up cost for doing what you speak of would be around $10k

It is an interesting idea, but a very expensive one.

$10k could buy a VERY nice green house and produce a LOT more - MUCH more efficiently...

its not going going to happen its totally impracticable the price for set up cost would be about 10/15k alone for just set up.

car batteries would never ever run a 100w light never mind a 1000w you would need capacitors/power uppers

its a great idea but the implications/set up cost just don't work

i thought about doing it with my friend with solar panels and after the calculations we worked out we would need 12 6ftx2ft solar panels to power a 400hps on its own

are current renewable energy supplys are not in any way able to grow 1 weed plant with out a good 30k to blow

.. The murder of an idea is always sad.. lol I guess we will have to restart this thread in ten years when things get more efficient. By that time, the whole concept of growing is going to change. Cannabis might even be legal.

sorry to pop your bubble dude i really do like the idea because i was thinking about it myself but the total cost would be epic

the day the uk legalizes weed there will be world peace and hell will freeze over

The same could be said about the U.S. And poppin my bubble is fully encouraged. Knowledge is power, and hopefully people with the same idea will be able to find this thread to give them an idea of what they are getting into. I guess the closest I will be able to get to my all green grow will be a green house

I think you'd be better off with a grid tied system...so your excess energy goes back to the grid and your meter spins backwards(the electric company pays you). There is alot of new energy storage tech that's on the horizon. Personally, I'd wait till something with higher energy density and charge rates come out.

There is also alot of new solar tech on the horizon. Photovoltaic panels are expensive and have low efficiency...15% i believe.

Nitro1990 said:

its not going going to happen its totally impracticable the price for set up cost would be about 10/15k alone for just set up.

car batteries would never ever run a 100w light never mind a 1000w you would need capacitors/power uppers

its a great idea but the implications/set up cost just don't work

i thought about doing it with my friend with solar panels and after the calculations we worked out we would need 12 6ftx2ft solar panels to power a 400hps on its own

are current renewable energy supplys are not in any way able to grow 1 weed plant with out a good 30k to blow

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I run 12 volt battery(from my trucks cig lighter) to charge my camera batteries while im working with a 12v to 110v DC/AC converter, wal-mart sells them for about $20, rms of 200w peak of 350 or so... so it is possible to run a 100w lightbulb off of a 12v battery rather easily and cheaply....

kadajett said:

Fresh fish is where it is at! But I have to slightly disagree with your statement Politely of course and as always, prove me wrong please! I have done some research and seen entire homes run on solar and a room full of about 10 deep cycle batteries.

If you can constantly refill the batteries, why would size matter?

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I was just taking it as charging the batteries to full capacity, then trying to run what you have setup (grow room wise) off those 5 batteries or even 10 without ever being able to charge them again for 1 whole week....its not possible. But you are right I also know a person who has a cabin where the power lines are so far away, it costs to much money hook up to them. So he runs a generator, charges 12v car batteries while the generator is on.....however they the batteries only run little appliances like fans and small lights and they are usually weak by the time he fires the generator back up the following day for a few hours. Deep cycle batteries also cannot be rapid charged, they need a 1 amp trickle charge if you are talking about like marine deep cycle batteries and a trickle charge usually takes at least 24 complete hours.