Solar Panels in a Grow Room?
- Thread starter titanium3g
- Start date
repvip
Well-Known Member
Hah! I too have been thinking about this for awhile.
When the power goes out, I have to power my pumps by a car battery and power inverter..
If the Cap recycle timer would run off a modified sign wave transformer (the cheap power inverters) I would power my pumps off the battery all the time, and have the harbor freight solar battery charger keeping the battery charged.
Last time the power went out my extra car battery was dead! It was almost an emergency.
When the power goes out, I have to power my pumps by a car battery and power inverter..
If the Cap recycle timer would run off a modified sign wave transformer (the cheap power inverters) I would power my pumps off the battery all the time, and have the harbor freight solar battery charger keeping the battery charged.
Last time the power went out my extra car battery was dead! It was almost an emergency.
burnonedown21
Member
having solar panels under your grow lights is definetly not worth the money/loss of energy and frankly makes no sense.keep in mind that energy cannot be created or reused, a self sustaining growhouse is against almost every rule of physics there is, so if you can do that then congrats and here is your nobel prize So say you have a 1000w HID running. Also consider that no energy is being wasted in the form of heat. You pay the electric company for 1000w to run your light. You then recapture the 100w that you have not hitting your plants and convert the light to energy and inefficiently return it back to electricity to power a fan. Why not just plug the fan into the wall? The energy has to come from somewhere. Another point is that in an efficient grow room you should have little to no wasted light and only wasted light can be reused by a solar panel. Mylar/hoods should focus as much light as possible on the plants. So basically the bottom line is this, go spend $50 on making your grow light efficiently use all of its energy on your plants and just plug your fans/pumps/whatever into the wall. The energy has to come from the electric company at some point
repvip
Well-Known Member
Really? Little to no wasted light in an efficient grow room?
You realize how stupid that sounds... right? Because you are so smart? Your plants are lucky if they even use ~30% of the light from an HPS bulb... meaning 70% is... what? WASTED! This doesn't even include the energy wasted in heat.
BTW, nobody was talking about a "self sustaining growhouse"..
burnonedown21
Member
hmm no one in here was talking about a self sufficient grow room? And i understand that energy is lost in heat. So so say your plants get 30% of light and you lose 20% of energy to heat. you now have 50% of your lighting to recycle, you lose atleast half of that with power dissipation/uncaptured light/ solar panel inefficiency. So you are left with 25% of your lighting to be recycled. so wouldnt it be better to spend your money on making your plants get as much light as possible then trying to recycle the unused light with solar panels. im not trying to act like I know everything, its just that to me it makes no sense to waste time/resources on this idea
MacGuyver4.2.0
Well-Known Member
This topic has been discussed on various forums across the globe and the answer has been a resounding NO among all forums. While you will have some reflected light, you should have a majority of it hitting the canopy. What is NOT being absorbed by the plants leaves is all that is left to power solar panels. Considering I have a 5.9KW solar grid array outside powering my home, (Kyocera 210 volt panels) I know a thing or two about solar. There would not be enough space or available full spectrum light left to power PV panels correctly. Your best best is to make your room as reflective as possible. Bright white painted walls work well as does white Poly Panda Film or heavy silver Mylar. The best refelctive films I have found (97%) are from 3M corp for backlighting LCD displays and it costs a small fortune!
buggin69
Active Member
you'll always lose a bit in the conversion... and since you're constantly converting and losing light to the plants and losing light energy to distance traveled you won't actually create a sustaining cycle... but you can capture lost light and store/use that energy... or you could spend less money on mylar and direct the light to your plants.
fat sam
Well-Known Member
the problem is this.... solar panels are only like 3-4% efficent at turning the light they recieve in to power, so right there its a total loss... then you have to remember that a 1000 wattt hps only turns roughly 450 watts of acutal light.... the rest is heat... then there is loos from the ballast and wires so really there is no point..... now if you were using a fat solar setup to supplement a greenhouse then there is a lot to gain