Reducing Energy Costs in Your Marijuana Grow Op

With summer coming and electricity rates rising, energy waste in your marijuana grow op is a hot topic.

There are standard methods for reducing marijuana grow op energy waste:

• Make sure the marijuana grow op room is sealed. We’re talking all openings including ducts, window frames, door frames, vents, floor to wall joints, etc.
• Make sure your air conditioner is new enough, and properly maintained and serviced, to function at 14 SEER or higher.
• Make sure your air handler is matched to your AC and is functioning properly. Make sure your air conditioner filter is clean.
• Install an extra return and an extra delivery duct (or larger return and delivery ducts) in your grow room.
• Put a light-colored roof on your grow house. Paint your house a lighter color. The lighter the better.
• Insulate the attic to the maximum recommended. Install an attic exhaust fan. Install ridge vents.
• Have your lights on all night instead of all day.
• Use Lush Lighting LED grow lights instead of or alongside HID grow lights.
• Grow varieties that can handle higher temperatures (Sativas).
• Use C02 augmentation so plants can handle higher temperatures.
• Chill your reservoir water to 68F. Chillers are a bit hard to run, but worth it.

If you read our other marijuana grow op energy-saving articles, you already knew those tactics.

Here are some new tactics…

• Grow autoflowering marijuana. The lights are on 18 hours the whole time from start to finish, but autoflowering cannabis is done in ten weeks, saving you several weeks of having to have the lights on at all. Read here for grow information on autoflowering marijuana.
• Use deep water culture or other pure hydroponics in your marijuana grow op. Your marijuana plants have to work harder to gain nutrition when you grow in soil. If you have them in pure water culture, aeroponics, rockwool, grow rocks, or even coco, they work less hard, grow faster, and produce bigger harvests.
• Use grow room controllers, monitors, and data loggers to manage every aspect of your marijuana grow op. Read here for more information on that.
• Use pH Perfect hydroponics base nutrients from Advanced Nutrients. As with the benefits of using pure hydroponics water culture in your marijuana grow op, when your nutrients water is automatically maintained at the ideal pH throughout the life of a reservoir mix, your plants work less to get more nutrition.
• Get a Tesla PowerWall. Solar panels to harvest sun energy are good, but with solar panels and Tesla’s new PowerWall battery system, you could harvest enough free sun energy to run a 5,000-watt marijuana grow op. The cost of the system will pay itself off in six months to a year!

Now you’ve got the most energy-saving tips for your marijuana grow op!