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lighting T5 Lights charge solar panels?

LordHill

LordHill

I am starting my winter grow.. Needing a small fan to help strengthen stems it occured to me that maybe i could run small fans off of solar power.. my question is, are T5 bulbs sufficient for charging small solar panels or do they just not have enough "sun"
My guess is that they cant. If they could i could use the bulb to charge the panel to power the bulb.. which physics says doesnt work.. figured id ask anyway
 
no you cannot charge a battery to run the lights by running the lights to charge the battery.

if you can see ANY light at all, or feel ANY heat being generated, or hear ANY sound what so ever being generated, you have your answer. nope.

your fan? probably not. is it an ac powered fan?
what size is the motor? there should be a label somewhere i imagine.

are you a young lad by chance? if so you will have this idea hammered into your head come your highschool years.
 
Put it this way. If you manage this, peppers are the least of the things you'll get for it. Like a Nobel Prize in physics for instance.
 
Yea i didnt think so lol. Not so much a young lad, just an uneducated 30 something with alot of time to think of these crazy ideas.. very boring job. Pays well, but 6-7 hours of nothing to do but read THP and think
 
I think the other 2 posters misunderstood you or I have you want to run a solar powered fan from the excess light from a t5? Not using the power from the lights to power the lights or perpetual motion.
 
I doubt it would work but I have ran them from the excess light in HPS grow room but I was using KW at the time.
 
I found it much better to use an electric fan you can get some good low wattage ones, if you think about a significant increase in yield for a small increase in price is often a good trade. Good ventilation is the key to healthy plants.
 
yea, as i noted in my post, hes likely trying to run an ac fan.

this would require an inverter, which would either be lossy, to the tune of like 40%, or expensive and efficient loosing only 10% or so.

a dc fan on the otherhand, would run provided you have the current.

a small panel, like a square foot in area, under those lights would give a few watts im guessing.
not much.
 
queequeg152 said:
yea, as i noted in my post, hes likely trying to run an ac fan.

this would require an inverter, which would either be lossy, to the tune of like 40%, or expensive and efficient loosing only 10% or so.

a dc fan on the otherhand, would run provided you have the current.

a small panel, like a square foot in area, under those lights would give a few watts im guessing.
not much.
Click to expand...
 
At best I would think and the loss in efficiency would be extreme I would prefer to cram more plantage in there.
 
ideally you would have a light sized exactly to the footprint you need... but yea.

just forget the wasted light, or grow more back up plants... perhaps you could pawn the backup plants, off onto friends or something similar.

i usually plant at least 3 popped seeds, expecting 2 two fail at some point. if i end up with three plants? garbage can is just fine.
 
I ordered a small fan that should do the trick. Was cheap, and im not concerned about the electric bill hit of a fan running all the time. Grow area is in my room, the little woman likes the cieling fan on while she sleeps all night for the noise, perhaps this will be able to replace that. I have extra room for plants, and a long list of varieties to fill it with. Just brain storming a bit.
 
They probably could, but you'd waste a ton of electricity, need many more bulbs than you have now, and a much larger solar panel. Much easier just to plug into a wall.
 
its easy to calculate the cost of any appliance.

just find the wattage consumed. there should be a label or something somewhere.

say you have a good powerfull fan. it draws 80 watts.

multiply 80 watts by the # of hours it runs per day

so 80 * 12 hours a day = 960 watt hours.

the electric company bills you in kWh, or killowatt hours. the normal price ( not including the monthly taxes fees etc.) is like 13 cents per kWh.

given that:

1kWh= 1000 watt hours.

960 /1000 = .96 kWh.

.96 kWh * 13 cents per kWh = 12.48 cents a day, or ~ 3.75 dollars a month.


the cost of your fan is meer penies compared to what your central air costs...

central ac, at like 4 tons, 7 hp, something like 4000 watts continuous.
running like 12 hours a day...

each hour you run it you use 4 kwh, costing you like 50 cents.

spending 6 bucks a day.... 180 bucks a month!
welcome to the south!
 
Cheap computer 120v/12vdc power supply. 1or2 cheap computer case fans. A little handy work,a little google work. Won't cost much. Maybe your answer.
 
I've run a small computer fan off a solar panel ripped out of an old calculator with a 9v battery as the energy bank. It can be done, it's just a pain in the ass and not really worth the time it takes to engineer such a monstrosity.
 
OP would be better off placing a mirror in the unused space and bouncing that light onto a nearby plant.
 
From an energy efficiency POV, solar cells suck!  You'd be much better off with the suggested computer power supply.  $5 for a used one on Fleabay or Craigslist.    
 
i don't understand. if he is not going to run a fan with a PV system, why even bother with a dc fan at all?

cheap power supplies are crap. a cheap power supply + a cheap dc fan will not be any more efficient than an induction motor.

an ac fan, of what ever power he requires is more logical. a crappy little clip on, or desk fan from walmart is like 10 bucks.
 
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