T5HO don't drop 50% in brightness each year. I've tested this over a 5 year+ span. It turns out to be maybe 1-2% which can be hardly noticeable because manufacturing differences can easily be 3% or more. Checked by PAR DLI meter.

Of course, LED are great and I've converted all my lights to those already. =)

I can't thank everyone enough for sharing their stories, pics and advice here.

In my quest to save as much as possible money and to use the lights that will work very well for my plants I had an electrical pro come over.lol I had too.

Just to show you how dumb I am when it come to knowing how lights work, he explained to me that the bulbs I were using were the best fit for me financially and ones that plants do appreciate.

I am not burning 34 watts as I had thought. Here comes the dumb part, I am using 15 watts per bulb!! I was actually having nightmares imagining what my bill would be at the end of the month during 16 bulbs at 34 watts each. They are using the equivalent of a 34 watt! Here let me post the bulbs I am using since I should of done that in the first place. The lumens is good and the other number is 6500 which I forget what that means. Anyways here is a link to what I am using. Keeping my fingers crossed on my electric bill and no need for my plants since they are flourishing. I knew they would with LED because I was using the regular bulb ones like Laura and others do and they worked miracles for my trees last year! I thought I would find an easier way for my set up and decided to stick with the same kind of light.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Philips-15-Watt-18-in-Linear-T8-ALTO-Fluorescent-Tube-Light-Bulb-Daylight-Deluxe-6500K-6-Pack-546100/308390816

So you stayed with the fluorescent T8 at about $10/bulb

I got my T8 2 bulb fixture for $12 reflector housing and cord.

Steve

Hey Bklyn, they actually cost me 17 dollars for a box of 4 at Lowe’s but their site wasn’t working. They are the same but made from G.E.
Here’s the lights and how well the plants are doing. All the color and flowering and fruiting remains after a few weeks under them.

More shots

Now all the buds are coming , flowers opening and colors are staying strong. Good growth too.

The fragrant orchids flowering

Jade flowering

More orchids budding out like crazy

Begonia holding on to leaves and flowers which normally croak after a week of being in my dimly lit house.

More growth..A very colorful Coleus that otherwise would of lost it's bright leaves within days if no light.

Very colorful jades holding on to color

Even the black is holding on or coming on certain plants that otherwise need the sun to do that.

A few more..Some of my Hoya specifically known for black leaves hard to purchase and hard to get black unless they have good light.

Colors

Few more..Spiking Phals, watch chain that Rina gave me flowering and growing huge that otherwise would turn brown with dimmer lighting of just my south facing window light at this time of the year. Colors holding on very well.

A few more
Cuttings taking hold well, hard to flower Hoya in winter, bright color on Korean jade.

Mike

Realy, really nice - plants, and your very neatly organized plant shelves.

LED's, fluorescent, same crap the purple and blue fogs are unnecessary. With the strip lights, old rule of thumb was one warm to 3 cool, same applies lED 3 daylight or white to one red bulb

bklyn I am with you on this one as well as may other of your ideas.

Steve

Beautiful, Mike! Makes me want to grow orchids again :-)

Wow, Mike, what delightful and gorgeous plants! They sure must love those lights, especially on dark days like this being so overcast and dreary.

New Zealand lemonade in temporary lighting till I can get the trashcan light set up.

This can will be used

New Zealand lemonade#1 · More Info

The tree shown in the light can is in now in ground and is about 6 feet by 6 feet

Steve

I have setups in every room of my house, but this is the primary one which is located in my kitchen!

Here is part of my grow setup. I've been on vacation for a month so things are not ideal!

It used to be 12x 4' T5HO and now it is 6x 4' LED. I also switched from running two AC brushed fans to two DC brushless fans which are vastly more efficient and will also last much longer.

This newer setup of lights and fans is saving me nearly $400 per year CAD in electricity costs. With the amount of money I got back from selling my used T5HO fixtures and lamps, the payback period was just two years.

I used to keep my high light plants on the counter top here, but now that space is taken over by mostly Haworthia so the lights are place much higher up. For the following photo, I just run the light for my Mesembs a few hours longer.

Mike,

your plants all look great! The colors on your Korean jade make me jealous....

Sharon

Mine are finally set up for the winter.

Laura your kitchen must be huge to be able to fit all those plants. Where is the fridge - lol.

Kevin your setup is very neat. And I like your little white pots. Where did you get them?

Here is one bedroom with the smaller plants. I built the shelf this year and I need to put some more lights on one end of it.

The patio is still in flux. Moving plants around and putting in some new lights.

Lol Pranab (Tropic) that is a breakfast nook and it is not huge. We usually have a kid table there when the plants are outdoors. It’s pretty crammed! You’ve got a nice setup yourself. It’s hard with such big trees. The tangelo is hitting the ceiling but I don’t want to cut it now and have it sprout again.

It's morphed somewhat over the years, but at this point I pull about 3800W over the cold months to keep my citrus alive. It's a mixture of 1000W+ metal halide and LED.

Tom Nice setup. Good to hear from you. My hybrid light setup.

Valentine pomelo on US897. and it's heater/light source. 4 23 watt CFL's

Seed grown Fukushu kumquat and it's heater/light source

Steve

Tom - That's a lot light!! Do you run during the night instead of during the day to save on electricity? That's if you have time-of-use pricing.

I want to do it but my grow area window/skylight have no curtains and it might mess up my flowering cycles.

Hi Steve,

Your Valentine has taken off under your care! Glad to see it thriving. I picked 15 fruit off my tree this year, and if I had to describe the flavor, it'd be akin to raspberry mixed with orange. It wasn't very pigmented this time, mainly because I had to bring them in right away--it went from hot to cold with not much in between, so the color couldn't develop. I am trying an experiment, though: I had a blood orange acquire internal pigment in my fridge over the course of three months, so I'm seeing if that works with these as well.

Hi Mayo,

It is, and I finally think I've hit the point where I have enough! Unfortunately (or fortunately), we don't have time-of-use pricing, so they run during the day for 12 hours (6AM-6PM). It's more of the natural sun-cycle here, and it's hard to see my living room glowing during the day. At night, it looks like a UFO abduction. If I can minimize the chances of cops bashing my door down, I will!

-Tom

Did someone mention UFO?

Tom, if you don't mind me asking, what the heck is the cost a month to run all that!? Just one of those power bulbs at 350 watts cost me an extra 60 bucks a month if not more. Very nice though. My lights on at night literally light up my neighbors yards. lol

Laura, there is something so pretty about your set up!! maybe how the leaves glow, or they look like Christmas lights mixed in between your trees. What ever it is, it's so pretty)

Tropico, I get that.lol

Hi Mike,

You asked a good question, and I figured I should finally sit down and calculate it out.

The rate charged by my utility is graduated from Oct 1-May 31 instead of a flat kWh rate during the summer. They are:

Winter (Oct. 1 – May 31)

8.63 cents/kWh for the first 100 kWh

7.46 cents/kWh for the next 900 kWh

5.27 cents/kWh for all additional kWh

We first assume that my house uses 500 kWh sans grow lights (based on past bills when the lights are not in use and it's not hot enough for the A/C).

My grow lights consume the following power: 1100W+1100W+1040W+478W+185W+60W(for the cooling fan), yielding 3960W.

3960W*12 hours/day=47.52kWh/day.

That means I consume 47.52kWh/day*30 days/month=1425.6 kWh/month.

Applying that number to the different price tiers (and again, assuming 500 kWh default), yields:

(400kWh*0.0746USD/kWh)+(1025kWh*0.0527USD/kWh)=$83.86/month.

Thankfully I don't have to run at the summer rate of 9.36c/kWh! That would translate to $133.44/month, ouch! Granted, Nebraska has very cheap power rates, overall.

-Tom

TLDR; $83.86 a month.

Tom, that is not bad at all. Keep them goimg@ ! I wish I had it made like that. If I ram that much I would be paying about 600 a month! I pay 12.9 Kwh at all times. It stinks!!

My electric runs about 8 cents per kilowatt hour and I get $40 worth of fixed meter fees before I use the first watt of electric.

Steve

Mike,

It's one of the few boons of living in a windy area. My utility derives 40% of its power from renewables (primarily wind); Google and Facebook have facilities out here because of that. These lights will continue to burn ;)

Steve,

I face a similar fee, but it's only $30/mo... after that, they do the whole usage-based thing.

-Tom

Tom - That is some very cheap electricity. Our rates here are 10.1 - 20.8c/kWh CAD (7.63-15.71c/kWh USD) depending on the time day it is used. Running 3960W during normal daytime hours for a year would cost me around $2700 CAD ($2040 USD) per year!!! That is calculated with our flat rate pricing on weekends/holidays/etc.

This isn't all of my plants but these are the plants under lights.

I am not sure how much electricity my set-up as a whole draws, I should calculate that.

These shelves are kind of a pain in the butt because I can’t move them up and down.

The blurple pannels are much more stronger than the white led panels (more lumens) that I made. The white LEDs are from rolls and I run it 14hrs, as opposed to 5hrs for the blurple. The rolls are only $8 each so that is why I wanted to try them out.

The cord mess annoys me!

Gabby

Where did you get these rolls of led's

Steve

I'm using a smart power bar which has individual energy meters on each outlet. Very easy and handy to see consumption at a glance! Here it is for three of my lights. Also nice to be able to adjust the timing from anywhere and they don't get messed up from power outages (which I had many due to other issues).

Before this spring, I had just one smart plug meter to take actual usage readings. Most libraries will loan them out free if you don't own one.

Oh that is nice eww. I'm putting smart plugs on my Christmas list!

I got the rolls off amazon. I think the biggest benefit for me was that I could make a panel to fit the shelves I had. But I do wish the lumens were better.

Here

Here is my setup- 11 x 600w, 3 x 1800w, 1 x 1000w full spectrum LED's. All controlled with WiFi smart plugs.

Peter your setup looks pretty neat. Looks like you have a lot of plants too. Have you actually measured how much power does each of your light draw? I would be interested in that.

(1) 1800w led actual draw = 280w

(1) 600w led actual draw = 153w

Thank you, Peter! I was going to ask you, as a fellow plant enthusiast, if that was safe--because you're still pulling around 3000W (unless you were running 220V, then it's a non-issue). Whew! Very impressive setup. Just make sure they're spread across at least two circuits, but I'm guessing you have already! I have mine spread across three.

-Tom

Yes, that is a very good point Tom. These lights are spread across two rooms and (2) 15a circuits fed by 14g Romex. I pulled the panel cover to confirm the max draw on each circuit was no more than 80% of the breaker rating since I am running the lights for 12 hours at a time. An interesting note per the NEC in the usa- residential breakers are rated at 80% of their nameplate rating when used for continuous duty. ( Continuous is over 3 hours)

Thanks Peter. Always good to understand the limits and be safe. Yours is an impressive setup. There is ficus bonsai enthusiast (Jerry Meislik) who lives in Montana and grows indoors all year round. Last I remember reading, several years back, he used at least 6x 1000W HID lights !!

Thank you, wow, 6000w HID! Must get hot in there.

6000 watts = 20000 BTUs

Steve

Peter, WOW, very nice light.. Could probably get a tan under those. How in the world do you keep the mites under control all winter on the Banana trees? I never bring mines in for that reason(

MIke

Peter - Nearly all electrical breakers, residential or industrial are rated for 80% continuous only. This applies pretty much across the world. 100% is fairly rare because it increases wire sizing and many other requirements. Nice setup!