LED breeding lights and the energy bill

You can switch to LED for several reasons, but the most important is often the energy bill. In addition to the costs for purchasing your LED breeding lamp, you naturally pay electricity costs. But what is your benefit in electricity costs after you have a new one LED breeding lamp Have you purchased?

What does electricity cost?

Power costs are measured in kilowatt hours (kWh). Power costs are different per energy provider, they apply different rates and you have to deal with fixed costs. Yet there are averages to discover. For private individuals that is around 22 cents per kWh in 2017 (incl. Energy tax). As a commercial greenhouse builder, other rates and conditions apply, and the VAT is also deductible.

Example calculation of power costs

A price is always per kilowatt hour, so if you let a lamp of 1000 Watt burn for 1 hour, you pay 22 cents for that. Suppose you have a 600 Watt HPS grow lamp as a grower that lets you burn 12 hours a day. Then you use 7,200 watts per day, which is 7.2 kWh per lamp per day. With a price of 22 cents, that is 1.58 a day. At 250 days a year that is more than 395 euros per grow lamp. A substantial cost item, which is not yet included in the switching equipment.

Switching to LED, what does that save me per lamp?

Greenhouse horticulture and gardeners often use 600 watts or 1000 Watt HPS/HID lamps. For example, you can replace a 600 Watt lamp with a child XL600 or Apollo 10 LED grow lamp. These lamps use 320 watts. A saving of roughly 50% (even more if you include the vice equipment). In the above example calculation, therefore, saves widely 197 euros per year per lamp. That means that the Apollo 10 LED grow lamp In less than 2 years, it is recovered.

And as a greenhouse builder then?

Due to the lower rates for energy and energy tax, it may be that you as a business user only pay 9 cents per kWh. That of course makes the sum different. When using 250 days, this means saving 81 euros per year per lamp. This makes the payback time a little longer but still worth it. After all, you are also no longer with the sometimes annual replacement of the HPS or induction grow lamp. All in all, this makes the whole switch to LED lighting in the garden and greenhouse construction very interesting. Do you use natural gas? In that case too a lot can be saved, more about that soon.

Energy tax

In the Netherlands we pay a lot of taxes together, so we also pay tax on energy. For private individuals, this energy tax is already in the 22 cents discussed above. As a company there is an advantage because the more you use, the lower the load becomes. That works through scale. With a higher consumption you end up in a higher consumption zone, which means that you will pay less energy tax on balance. That means a lower electricity price that can save great consumers. 

Measuring energy consumption of equipment and lighting

Would you like to know for sure what a lamp really uses? Then you can buy a consumption meter. You put this in the socket, then put the plug of the grow lamp or other device in the consumption meter. For a consumption meter you pay between 10 and 30 euros.