Are you worried about how indoor cannabis growing is affecting your energy bill? Read on to find some energy saving efficient grow hacks. Pick up some sweet tips to cut back on power usage and save money while you help save the planet!
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High Cannabis Yield, Low Electricity Bill
As much as we try to keep weed and geopolitics strictly separated, sometimes it’s impossible to avoid one affecting the other. Recent and long-term global developments have caused energy bills to skyrocket all over the world, and while this affects all of us, indoor cannabis growers have started to feel the consequences in very real ways.
This has led to a surge of attempts to secure an energy efficient cannabis grow, ideally producing maximum harvest results at minimum power consumption. Luckily, we have a few quick hacks to help you keep your electricity bill in check and make your grows more sustainable while still making the most out of your power-hungry cannabis plants.
Sunshine
One obvious response to the mounting energy costs of growing weed is to take it all out into the sunshine. Growing cannabis outdoors drastically reduces your expenses by using natural and 100% free sunshine instead of grow lights. Extraction fans, heating, and other power-hungry systems are no longer required if you take your hobby outside.
However, not all of us have the opportunity to do outdoor ganja gardening. Maybe you don’t have a garden or balcony, or perhaps you are too scared of attracting unwanted attention. For practical reasons, we will only discuss ways to promote indoor growing efficiency below.
On that note, you could also consider planning your indoor cannabis growing over the warm summer months of the year.
There is an alternative to using direct sunshine that can be employed in any grow room: solar power. If you have the means, investing in a few rooftop solar panels can really help cut costs while benefiting the environment at the same time. If you have the chance, go for it!
Grow Lights
Indoor growers need grow lights to enable photosynthesis in their crops, simple as that. That being said, some lighting systems are way more energy efficient than others. LED lights consume far less power to produce the same amount of light emitted by fluorescent lights or HPS bulbs. That makes them a great choice for energy efficient grow setups, especially since the technology has become much more affordable for hobbyists in recent years.
LED grow lights are not just more energy efficient than other types of lighting. They also tend to last longer, produce less heat that can harm your crop, and many LED systems offer the option of adjusting the light spectrum to the specific phases of the cannabis life cycle your plants go through.
Insulation For Efficient Heating
Insulation is another way of improving the energy efficiency of indoor grows. Insulating your grow room properly will prevent heat from seeping away, making it more cost-effective to maintain the high temperatures that many strains require.
Technically speaking, thermal insulation will save more on power costs than any preventing light from leaking away, which also counts as insulation. Still, you will want to prevent light from leaking into your grow room rather than out as this affects growth behaviour, so eliminating one type of leaks will usually improve the other type of insulation as well.
Applying and improving insulation does not have to be complicated. That’s a real advantage for many growers, who prefer not to have construction workers or handyman relatives snooping around their grow rooms. You will find a full range of affordable insulation materials at any DIY that are easy to install, especially if you check out a few instruction videos on YouTube first.
If you are using a grow tent for your plants, remember that its level of insulation largely depends on the conditions of the surrounding room. You may want to relocate your tent to a more well-insulated room, or apply some additional insulants in the most suitable room for a cheaper, more energy efficient grow.
Choosing Fast & Efficient Cannabis Strains
Another way to cut back on power usage is to order fast flowering cannabis seeds, as these take less time bathing in artificial light to produce a harvest. Remember that your plants will require more light during the vegetative stage than while flowering. Picking indica-dominant strains that grow and flower faster than their sativa counterparts is an effective strategy. Autoflower seeds are a nice and quick alternative as well, with the added benefit of switching to flowering without requiring a change of lighting hours.
Below, you will find some of our most energy efficient cannabis seeds to try:
Managing Your low Energy Cannabis Grow
Clearly, there are plenty of quick and easy ways to make growing weed more energy efficient. The trick is knowing which power hacks will have the biggest impact on your particular grow setup.
And remember that any energy you manage to save on other aspects of your everyday life will help compensate for the watts you invest in those weeds. Taking fewer weekly showers can make a real difference, for instance – and no-one will smell your armpits anyway if you have a nice and dank grow going on…
