Berlin’s leftist, climate-cultie TAZ here reports on how indoor pot growers are switching over to LED lighting to grow their clandestine cannabis. Like, we’re saving the planet too, dude!
Image cropped from Cheech and Chong film: Up in Smoke, Paramount Pictures.
The TAZ article features a photo of a US grower with the caption:
Indoor growing in Denver: Works better with LED lamps and supposedly more environmentally friendly.”
The problem with regular lamps is that they consume up to 600 watts per square meter and lead to really high (no pun intended) electric bills. Not only does this cut into growers’ profits, but excessive power consumption also raises suspicions at the power companies. The energy saving LED lights now do a better job at hiding suspicious electricity consumption and at the same time solve the problems of keeping the growing basement or garage cool, the TAZ writes.
There’s another security advantage: high electric bills are not the only way of detecting illegal indoor growing activity, the TAZ writes that the German government, for example, uses helicopters equipped with infrared cameras to sense the heat generated by indoor growers. The TAZ writes that this method of detection will have a much more difficult time now that growers are switching to the low-energy LED lighting.
Another savings, the TAZ writes, is that LED lighting with a rating of 50,000 hours have a far longer lifetime before they burn out.
Now comes the really good news for cannabis connoisseurs: LED light frequency can be precisely adjusted and thus help to yield crops that have premium quality, i.e. more high for the light.
Wow, now growers can feel good about growing climate-friendly pot. And potheads will soon be able to smoke weed without leaving a much of a carbon footprint. Smoke a joint – save the planet!
Interesting finding, a specific light frequency? That must have taken a lot of testing. Did they publish any peer-reviewed papers on that topic?
I saw a report that said California pot growers are using the equivalent of 8 entire power plants. About 10 percent of all domestic power usage in California is by pot growers.