First is figuring out a way to recycle the HPS light energy through solar panels and use it again through the light. I don't know if this would be possible because its not genuine sunlight and it might not be powerful enough. The second was that I found these little fans online that are meant to be clipped onto hats. They are solar powered. I was thinking of having a pipe setup that sucked in fresh air from outside and puffed it back out at ground level by the plants. Something like the shitty diagram I've drawn here Thoughts? I'm thinking it would be pretty damn boss to have a somewhat self sufficient grow system.
I don't know if that was ment to be funny or true but I just died laughing at that statement...one of the funniest things ive heard in awhile..thanks for that lmao
Well, at least now you know that it's possible, eh? I even gave you a design idea, put the solar panels in your reflector. You're on to something, and it's a good plan. So how are you going to build this thing if you can't buy reflectors, HPS bulbs, solar panels and pc fans?
This is pretty stupid. Any light captured is not being reflected and therefore not reaching the plants... There is a reason reflectors aren't black. If you could recapture light from under the canopy you might have an argument for increased efficiency, but not even really. The best solar panels on earth are able to transfer about 60% on light energy into current. Small scale ones like that about 40%. Assuming 80% efficiency in a 1000 watt bulb over a square meter coverage would mean 800 watts of energy in the forum of light gets to the plants. A square foot is close enough to 3% of a square yard. Thus you would be exposing a one foot by one foot panel at canopy height to about 24 watts and capturing back roughly 10 watts. Much less below canopy. While it might seem fun to see that it works, there is no free energy. Anything the panels absorb the plants will not and the reclamation would be negligible at best. Just run a 10W fan...
What are you talking about? Nice info, but plants are not magnets for light. Having a solar panel wouldn't steal some that they were using?
it absolutely would if you put them in the reflector... and under the canopy where it would not rob photons from the plants, it would be too little light to run anything... thats my point. anything you absorb at the reflector is not being reflected to the plants.
if your plants pots were sitting on solar panels to absorb anything that falls through the canopy it wouldn't be using potentially reflected light. but the gains would be negligible.
Your far far far better off making all your surfaces as reflective as possible. Using surfaces that absorb light such to the extent that solar panals do your just wasting light that would normally be reflected and go straight to the plants. If you set up a solar panel to a light it would be extremely inefficient at turning the light in to electricity to then run a lamp to turn it back in to light. You will lose half the energy to heat You could use solar fans but I don't see any point because you can just use additional electricity instead of robbing perfectly good light. They work well in a green house though
Plus solar panels are made to collect energy for the sun...if we could collect energy from a couple of light bulbs to make free energy than nobody would be paying for electricity lmao..cmon man...
I'm not under some illusion that I can get free light, I'm just looking for ways that I can make things more economic. Also, I like to think of ideas. Dont be a dick, I'm not rich man. I was thinking of setting up one of these for each plant to keep the air flowing. http://www.trademe.co.nz/clothing/unisex-accessories/caps/other/auction-656940524.htm
I'm not being a Dick bro...were all on a budget, But sometimes cutting corner isn't efficient enough to benifit the factor. Were all on here to help eachother out in one way or another. By all means, keep trying to do what your doing and maybe you can figure a way out to make growing more efficient for all of us. We all knew where you were going with this and it would be awesome if it could work but its not. And the whole thing with the fans. If you have enough sun light go for it...if you like solar panels this much you should try to make a unit and your whole grow CAN be free...good luck and happy growing L.
Skunky, the point is that the pennies a month it would cost you to run a 10 watt fan, is far better than taking the say 80% of your usable light with a reflector, and turning that into say 40% usable light. So a few bucks extra, a few watts for a small fan and more light. OR a setup with less light, and a bunch of , what I assume aren't very cheap, solar panels, wires, fans, and such... Just a small fan sure sounds cost effective and economical to me.
The truth of the matter is that I live in a small town and there are no places that sell fans otherwise I would have just bought one So I got to thinking, but yeah I'll just get a fan
if you have a solar collector the best use for it may be up on the roof in some sunshineMjfrom someplace on something
Yeah as above ^^ if you want to use solar energy to run your lights put the panels on your roof. Taking electrical light energy to turn back in to electricity so you can in turn turn that back in to light is obviously an inefficient way of doing it. The whole fan idea isn't much good either as your still taking that usable light away and turning it in to electricity and then in to air movement when you could just plug your fan in to the wall and use the electricity straight from there. Fans use just a few watts so you won't be saving any real amount of electricity. Plus what happens in the dark period? They go off so you will have to run electric fans straight from the wall outlet anyway Keep thinking of ideas man, we need more thinkers, but it just so happens that this particular idea isn't very good. You could put some large solar panels on your roof and hook them up to batteries so you have 24 hour running fans but the costs involved setting it all up will probably make the whole idea null and void
theres a market for everything, functional or not, look at all the informercials these days. what you NEED to work on, is your pitch. your salesman pitch.