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Powering Grow-Lights with Durable Energy?

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S

SKA

Rising Star
Hi Swimmers,

SWIM lives in The Netherlands. The upside: A relatively free Cannabis and soft drug policy.
The downside; It's a rainy, cold, dark, winter-dominated country.

In The Netherlands it is allowed to grow up to 5 Cannabis plants per household, of which 2 may be flowering at a time. More is punishable by law.
SWIM wants to grow his own indoor mini-garden of Cannabis(about 4 to 5 plants), and also of other Sunlight-hungry plants like Mimosa Hostilis, Acacia Podalyriifolia, Lophophora Williamsi(Peyote) and Trichocereus Pachanoi(San Pedro)

SWIM has to grow indoor with growlights and humidity-control because he has no garden and because the Dutch climate won't allow for the year round growth of such plants. He prefers not to use payed for electricity to supply the grow-lights with power. This would cost a fortune and draw unnececairy attention.

A terrarium is easily made with 2 arched, U-shaped PVC-tubes forming into a sort of birdcage-frame and then wrapping transparent plastic around it and sealing it airtight, perhaps leaving a small hole for a de-humidification pipe to fit through. But for now Humidity-control is of later concern.


Now what SWIM has been wondering about. Would it be possible to generate electricity from a renewable, durable source to power a grow-light sufficiently and constantly? Would wind energy suffice? SWIM's roof is quite a windy place.

What renewable energy sources could power grow-lights to give off sufficient light and heat for proper tropical plant growth?

Anyone?
 
I know it's definitely possible to do. Even if you don't think you live in a sunny spot, solar panels are definitely a good option. I also live in a place with tendencies to be rainy and windy a lot of the time, especially during the winter, and people do pull off grow lights using solar panels. I am not one of them, or I'd have more details, but I've seen it in action.
Wind might be something to look into if you live somewhere which is truly windy. I thought we lived in a windy-enough place, but it turns out you need A LOT of wind to make a wind turbine worthwhile.
 
You can build a fairly inexpensive wind/solar system yourself. The attached image gives a general idea
 

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Excellent. SWIM's been pondering the combined use of solar and wind-energy. Never realised so little sunlight would suffice to power a grow-light.

If the solar-panel and the wind-turbine could both deliver generated electricity to a condensator and the condensator feeding the grow-light, that could probably supply an efficient and constant electric current through the grow light.


Wind-turbines can quite easily and inexpensively be made. SWIM's seen many simple & genius DIY-windturbine designs on www.instructables.com from materials like carboard and whatnot.

A solar cell would probably be alot more expensive, no? SWIM's mother has garden lights, with tiny solar cells, that give off a VERY vague, weak ligt at night.
SWIM supposes he not only needs a bigger surface of solar cell, but also a better quality solar cell to power a grow-light that can sustain the light- and heat-levels needed to grow Tropical plants succesfully through the autumn and wintertime.



So far SWIM thinks he'll stick with just wind-energy, because solar-panels are waaay too expensive. Unless SWIY could prove SWIM wrong by showing him relatively cheap solar panels.

Wind-generators are easy to make and quite cheap to make too. (Some copper-wire & a metal core to make a coil, 4 strong, rectangulair magnets & 4 cardboard/plastic wind blades to attatch the magnets to.)OR (Buying/Salvaging a relatively big Electro-motor and properly attatch the 4 wind-blades to the Axis of the Motor)
SWIM guesses he should find out how much a small model wind generator generates and if it isn't sufficient then he could build a bigger, more wind-susceptable Wind-generator that spins faster and generates more electricity.

Perhaps 1 proper wind-generator connected to a Condensator could be enough to constantly and sufficiently power a growlight? SWIM's keen to find out.
Only to find out if it will supply enough and constant power, besides the wind-generator, SWIM's going to need a Volt Meter as well. Perhaps he can buy 1 on the cheap or find a someone from who he can borrow it.
 
If there's enough sunlight to convert the energy into electricity and then again into light, you might as well directly use the sunlight with fiberoptics.

You should compare the prices of wall electricity to installing some kind of generator. I have my doubts that it will be cheaper, at least in the short-middle term.
 
There is defenitely not enough Sunlight in the Dutch winters to grow tropical plants.
There will defenitely be enough wind to generate electricity from in the winters here however.
 
maybe just a set up to veg the plants indoor? i grew my starts to 3-4' one year under 80watts of tube floros. in my climate they needed lots of slow introduction to the sun though(they would have fried in the hot Ca sun)

or consider other season extenders,(green-houses/coldframes, light dep, etc)

lots of creative gardeners in your climate, no need to re-create the wheel
check this out for example

not too mention general horticulturists in general
 
dg said:
maybe just a set up to veg the plants indoor? i grew my starts to 3-4' one year under 80watts of tube floros. in my climate they needed lots of slow introduction to the sun though(they would have fried in the hot Ca sun)

or consider other season extenders,(green-houses/coldframes, light dep, etc)

lots of creative gardeners in your climate, no need to re-create the wheel
check this out for example

not too mention general horticulturists in general
Click to expand...

Too bad I can't view those pics. Don't feel like signing up to view the pics/method, but could you perhaps elaborate on it a little?
 
SKA: STOP! THINK! You are in the netherlands.... Its not so rainy and cold, not all the time anyway. SWIM lives in scotland and SWIM heard a FOAF talking about growing outdoors!! Listen to this: his friend said he saw three seperate growlogs on the internet, by a guy who lives in the highlands (which is much colder than here) and he grew outdoors year on year. He even had to fend off wandering deer and everything!!! Amazing!!

I Strongly urge you to reconsider growing outdoors.
That way, you have NO electricity bill to pay, and your
start up costs will be a lot lower than buying a solar panel, wind turbine, etc.

- bring your plants on in plenty of time indoors
- accustomise them to outdoor climate
- pick a secluded spot
- fill in with quality compost soil
- or add pH balancing agents to the existing soil + fertilise
- protect them with wire mesh and slug pellets
- harvest before dampness causes rot


SWIM stored a list of viable strains to be grown outdoors in holland and even scotland: the #1 which kept popping up though, is Purple Power, and its descendants like Purple #1. Also mentioned, were the autoflowering strains like lowryder, and any auto flowering hybrids obviously. Just to say SWIM has seen proof of this being done, and the netherlands should NOT be a problem!!!
 
I also live in Scotland and know of a few people that grew outdoors with no probs, even lowryders on a kitchen window during winter.

Even when I lived in the Netherlands I grew a couple outdoors with no problems except trying to keep my neighbours away during harvest time.
 
Thanks shoe, for your concern.

Indeed SWIM is currently growing a delicious smelling, female cannabis plant. He grew her all summer starting with a small plant about 24 cm high in early springtime. She is now a really tall (abt. 1,5 meters high and abt. 1 meter in width) and growing serveral branches full of rows of developping buds.

SWIM is sure he'll have quite a nice stash at the end of autumn.


The problem is Wintertime: It gets REALLY cold, REALLY dark and REALLY wet here in winter. It basically cuts every plant down to the ground. If it gets cold enough and frost reaches deep into the soil, all plant's roots are killed so they won't even grow back the next Spring.

Now it is this bleak, harsh wintertime SWIM wishes to make bearable for his plants using growlights.
SWIM doesn't only mean to grow Cannabis plants through winter. He seeks to grow serveral other plants as well(Such as P.Viridis, Banistereopsis Caapi, Acacia Podalyriifolia, Peyote, San Pedro and others) that will defenitely NOT survive the Dutch winters without a terrarrium with humidity control and growlights.

So for the purpose of powering growlights without energy-bills that make SWIM broke and put SWIM on Minister Ab Klink's "to do"-list, he seeks to use free, sustainable energy sources.

He will gather material needed for a windgenerator (some synthetic or plywood boards + a cupperwire coil and magnets or a relatively cheap, but powerfull electro-motor used in reverse)

He's also been having more and more interrest in exploring Zero Point Energy.

Anyone here experienced with Zero Point energy?
 
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