Power Outage

Hey DGC Growers Love. I have a question regarding power outages. I’ve been three days without power and now it comes on and off. My question is should I turn the lights on in flower when the lights come on intermittently or wait and keep them on there regular schedule. Also my timers are digital. Hope you all stay warm and safe.

Growers Love

8 Comments

HizHighness69 on February 18, 2021 at 10:23 am

Maybe I understand the question… let me give it a shot: Guru has said it before. Intermittent light when the lights are supposed to be ‘on’ is ok. Simulates a cloud going by… right. Then at night, just make sure it doesn’t come ‘on’ when it’s supposed to be sleeping. If your timer is affected by the outage, then I’d switch to analog (use your finger) to turn the lights on and off until power is fully restored.

Chad.Westport on February 18, 2021 at 11:00 am

I certainly would defer to Guru about the “ok’ness” of lights being sporadic during the lights on period. I know that the light cycle can be fudged a little, but the dark cycle shouldn’t be interrupted.

When the plant receives light vs not receiving light, there is a reaction in the phytochrome which signals the plants to do different things internally. Even if the night was uninterrupted, I wonder if the lights are on then there is a power outage for 3 hours, then lights back on , then out for another hour and back on again during the 12 hour lights on cycle would screw things up? Sounds like it might create an unhappy plant at the least.

I recently had power outage during lights on. With bed time approaching and no power, I decided to turn the lamps off incase power came back when I wasn’t awake. My thought there was just to give it an extra long nap instead of confusing it with an odd schedule. Overall, I think these things can happen once or twice in a cycle with no big, bad effects, but if it is happening every week, that could be a challenge.

Agent 47 on February 18, 2021 at 12:35 pm

Sometimes these situations lead to starting a new run and making sure we have backups like a generator. This happened to us in 2006 during the big blizzard in Colorado. Im sure a few folks remember.. for about a week our power went on and off. Eventually every plant we had showed intersex traits. We still smoked it but it sucked. We learned a lot from that grow. Tab timers don’t run when the power stops lol. We purchased a generator just in case. About 3 years later a similar situation happened and we used the generator for the house and had very little issues. You might be able to rescue them if you can get them back on
their normal schedule they have adapted too. Generators are cheap insurance for these situations. I would definitely get one for future power outages. Turn it on plug it in and keep it fueled up and you’ll be all good. Harbor Freight has cheap generators that will get you by.

RASUFA on February 18, 2021 at 12:40 pm

Seems like we are all experiencing this. I was able to let my lights just turn back on as it was a short power break during the light cycle. I have battery backed digi timers so they keep the program and automation resumes. A power outage during dark cycle here turns off my fans but once it comes back the battery backed timers are still programed and fans come on as well as lights at the correct time. I am curious what guru has to say about intermittent light during the light cycle. Guru, Soup, Chad, Coach, Mystro…….you guys are all full of awesome mad science!!!!

JustCoolin on February 18, 2021 at 12:49 pm

Id say keep their schedule as regular as possible. No sporadic light because it’s available. Even using a flashlight when you do run the lights to avoid the on off aspect. Timers aren’t going to help, you’ll be the timer for the time being. Worst case longer dark period than usual but they can only survive so long without any light, wish I knew exactly how many days. Also try not water or feed as they aren’t going to be able to use that without the lights on environment.

Stone Root on February 18, 2021 at 2:49 pm

I lost power for about 60 hrs in Dec. The plants late in flower simply lost time. The plants early in flower threw full male flowers not nanners. 30 of the 37 plants in veg noticeably went into flower. I jammed all the plants throwing pistils in the flower room. The last half dozen started curling over the week, they too clearly were in flower and trying to reveg. As the ripe plants finished I replaced with the screwy ones. I also seeded all the plants that went in after the outage that I cared about so that rogue pollen would have a difficult time. I let the revered ones do their thing. Lots of bud and viable seed.

FreedomFarmsMT on February 23, 2021 at 12:31 pm

Generator bro….same issues here last year….lost a bunch of food and fucked up my plants….then I bought a super quiet 2200watt Generac generator for around $600. Power went out last week and it took me about 20 min to hook up every other HLG600R and three fans (don’t forget the fans…stagnant air spawns shit-nado’s of bugs, mold, mildew)

I dialed the power down a little on the 3 HLG lights in flower and 2 in veg plus the fans…..basically created a really cloudy day, but it was a lot better than wondering which particular army of fuckyouups was invading and the grow stayed growin’

Yeah, $600 is a lot of dough, but I see too many growers not spending money on back-ups and redundancy. Peace of mind brother…can’t put a price on that.

J.R. on February 23, 2021 at 11:17 pm

Your post was featured on episode 1162! Thanks for your support!!

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