Hi, I was wondering if it were possible to estimate the cost of running your lights on a 24 hour cycle for 1 month. I did search for my answers and found a useful thread about CFL's, but it did not answer my question. I live at home, and wanted to stealth grow and my main concern is the power bill being a red flag. Let's just say to simplify things I run one 65 watt CFL 24 hours a day for a month. How much would that add to the power bill? EDIT: I found this useful link: http://www.ehow.com/how_2172446_calculate-electric-costs-energy.html If I ran 4 65 watt CFL's 24/7 and stopped using my space heater, stopped leaving my computer on, and conserved around the house I don't imagine I'd have anything to worry about. Or, would I?
Consider that one bulb is running about 1/8th of the power that your computer uses, even with the monitor off.. And I'm basing that on a fairly low-end psu. That one bulb will not be a concern Even 250w (about 4 of those bulbs) is only just over half of what your computer draws without the monitor. Your rate (its per kilowatt hour /kwh) can be found on your bill and you can plug it into the formula Mr.Bubb|es provided.
Thanks xshadowshooter +rep to you. Haha you can understand me asking to see the power bill would only draw me into questions I don't have answers to. I was thinking ('m on a gaming laptop actually), when I'm not gaming I could just use the battery until it dies, then plug it into the wall until charged again and continue the cycle. Would that be effective? Or would running the laptop + charging it add additional power usage and not really be efficient?
Actually studies have shown that using your laptop while charging it can significantly decrease battery life! I don't think you will conspicuously raise the power bill, the best thing you can do is just try to conserve power in other ways if you are paranoid.. shut lights off when not in use, do your laundry in bigger loads.. Keep your laptop off when you aren't using it. If you have any incandescent lights still in use in your house surrepticiously change them to 23w CFLs and you will probably compensate for the light you are using to grow.