Design a Solar Powered Grow Room
Investing in a solar powered grow room can be the best way to insure profitability of an indoor grow room, keeping utility bills low and costs down. A solar powered grow room might be just right for you, whether you tie on to the grid or keep a low profile with an off grid system; the benefits of solar are increasing as energy prices go up. The reasons for solar include security, saving money, profitability, and the environment.
Instructions
1. Choose how much to offset and what setup you want to run (how many lights)
If you can offset this cost of running the lights in a grow room, you have significantly raised your profitability and lowered you cost to produce the marijuana.
Choose the number of lights you use in the spaces provided. With one 240W LED light you can cover about a 4 by 4 foot area or 16 square feet. Approximately 4-240 Watt LED lights make up 1000 watts. 4 lights could cover a grow room 48 square feet or a room 5 x 10, a sizable grow room.
RULE OF THUMB: LED lights use less energy and produce more light with lower wattage, a rule of thumb to use is that for every 240 Watts of high powered LEDs you get the equivalent of 1000 watts. Typical grow lights will be 1000 watts if they are of any quality such as most HPS and HID grow lights.
2. Define the Load in Watts.
The wattage for 4-240W LED lights would be 960watts. These high powered LED lights can be hard to find but they are becoming more popular, here is a link to a 120 W LED system. Most appliances (like a pump) have a power tag on the back with this information. A useful formula for this step is: Amps x Volts = Watts.
3. Define your watt hours needed.
For lights, add up the number of hours each type of bulb is on. For example, if you have four 240W bulbs (approximately 1000W for math purposes) on for 24 hours each day, write down 24000 watt-hours, this would be 168000 watt-hours per week or 672kWh per month. Divide by 7 to get daily usage of 24,000 watt hours per day.
4. Now determine the size of the system in kilowatts. 1kW = 3600kWh; So 24,000kwh/3600kwh gives us a system sized at 6.6kW.
System 7 KW - OutBack Equipment: 2450 Peak Watts DC, 7400WH/day
* (14) SW175 SolarWorld 175 watt modules
* OutBack VFX3648 Inverter
* OutBack ACA and DCA Adapter kit
* AC and DC FLEXware Enclosures
* Input/Output Bypass
* Breakers
* Mate Inverter Display and Controller
* (24) Rolls S-460 Deep Cycle Batteries
* TriMetric Amp Hour Meter
* TM-48 48 volt Adapter
* (2) Lightning Arrestors
* Charge Controller
* RTS temp sensor for controller
* Combiner Box w/ breakers
* Assorted inverter cables, battery interconnects, hardware, wire, connectors, etc.
System 7 KWH - OutBack Equipment Price $20,632
5. The average price of a 7kW system would be $22,941.00 Only $3.16 Per Watt !!!
Price Before Any Rebate Or The 30% Federal Tax Credit !
