New Grower - Electricity and Time of Day to run lamps.

[camel]

Hi Folks,

I'm a new grower from Atlantic Canada. We're permitted here to grow up to 4 plants, so that's my current plan. I'll get to my set up in another thread soon. My first question has to do with electricity and growing times. I saw one thread from 2 years ago that had a little mention of this, but didn't see anyone's experiences.

So locally it's about $0.086/kWh during "off-peak" times. (Weekends, and nights). And in the summer months it's $0.156/kWh (almost double) during peak times (7am - 11pm). And in winter there's a separate peak times (morning and evening) that is $0.199.

Based on the times, it looks like the cheapest timeframe for me to use lights for the 18h period is 11pm - 3pm and 11pm - 11am for the 12h period. I am using a grow tent, inside of a grow room with no windows, so even daytime it's pretty dark in there. I'm curious if anyone has experience doing something similar or if there's any concerns I'm not taking into account (for instance, would doing this also mean limiting the times I care for the plants to the time the lights are on as well? If so I may want to adjust to get a little more time in the earlier evening as that will most likely be when I'm able to check on them in person for watering etc)

Thanks in advance,

Camel in a Hat

[kingfish]

Just use the lights when it's most convenient for you. I personally use my vegging light from 6am 'till midnight and my flowering light from 8am 'till 8pm.

[SirSmksAlot]

If you want to work on your plants during lights off you can get a green led bulb that won't affect the plants growth. I got mine from Canadian tire for 8 bucks I believe. Welcome to the forum

[SmokingYoda]

I too use a green light if I have too go in my room during lights off but it's rare. I used to run my lights on the off peak hours but it was just too inconvenient for me. Now I run my veg and flower cycles so I can work on my crop between 4pm and 7pm. My bill has maybe increased by 7 bucks for the month. I'm Northern Ontario.

[Toker1]

Look up gas lantern technique. You don’t have to follow the light schedule norms if you don’t want to. I use 12 hours of light, 5.5 hours of dark, 1 hour of light, and 5.5 hours of dark, then replete for summer. And the 1 hour used to break up the dark cycle is done by a 20w cfl, so no real heat addition there. The growth is a bit slower than 18 on 6 off but the heat index is minimized to what I need it to be.
Well, here is the deal...you are correct in wanting to take advantage of off peak hours. That’s good. But if you are going past the 7am limit anyway, why not start a bit earlier? I would assume by noon, the heat index will be high in summer. So I would try to plan lights out by 11am to avoid the heat issues.... If possible.