will my electric bill spike????

Discussion in 'First Time Marijuana Growers' started by baxterfinch, Apr 22, 2011.

  1. ive been growing my plants for about three weeks now. lights have been on 24/- since... is my electric bill going to go crazy? my roommates keep asking me. and im worried. i have three 23 watt CFL bulgs, two 17 watt flourescent tubes, and a 40 wall shop light all going.
     
  2. you do know how to read your electric bill...? you know how much wattage you are using and multiply it by your kilowattage rate.
     
  3. probably not that much
     
  4. Its pretty easy to approximate the energy cost of any given appliance or light.
    For example, if you add up the wattage of all your lights (3x23 + 2x17 + 40) = 143 watts = .143 kilowatt (1000 watts = 1 kilowatt).
    Energy units are in Kilowatt hours so you multiply the power by the amount of time you run the lights, in your case .143 kilowatts x 24 hours = 3.432 kilowatt hours. This will be the amount of energy those lights use in a single day...so to calculate for the month, just multiply by the number of days in that month's billing period.
    If you look on your last energy bill, you can find the cost that your energy company charges per kilowatt hour (I think mine is like 11 cents or something). Multiply that cost per unit by the energy units to get the final cost.
     
  5. Sure it will increase but if you did things like watch TV less, and turn off all the lights when you or somebody else leaves a room your probably not going to have much of a difference. Your not running that many watts, and if you are worried about it cut back to 18/6. It's as simple as using basic math to figure out how much your setup will run you alone on your electric bill each month. You just need to find out how much your electric company charges per kilowatt hour. Here is calculator you can use to figure all this out, Wattage of Appliance is going to be the total watts of your setup, fans, lights, and whatever else.

    Costs Calculator
     
  6. yes, it will go up .... a jazillion dollars a month.
     
  7. 3 x 23 + 2 x 17 + 1 x 40 = 143 Watts

    143 watts x 24 hours x 30 days x .001* x rate per kwh = price of lights.
    * conversion of watts to kilowatts.

    My rate per kwh (kilowatt hour) is pretty low just under seven cents. So if you plugged in my rate you would get about $7.21 added onto to the electric bill. You can curb this cost by going to an 18/6 lighting schedule (with a bit less growth), as well as by replacing all your bulbs with cfl's and just generally conserving electricity.
     
  8. #8 NJsteez, Apr 22, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 22, 2011


    All great information here. :) Don't forget to move your decimal back to the left two spaces or you might be a bit shocked by your answer to say the least.

    Wow my KW H cost is about exactly double that. Lucky guy.
     
  9. All this, good info. Don't forget to include the wattage of your fans, any pumps, etc to get the electrical consumption cost of your grow, not just your lights...

    If your bill does not show your kwh rate you can easily calculate a very close approximation by taking the total $$ amount of your last bill and dividing by the total kwh used during that last billing period.
     
  10. unless your using more than 5000watts per hour they wont blink an eye lid after all the more you use the more money they make:rolleyes:
     

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