Lord knows the cat certainly doesn't need any more nutrients, damn fat thing. Ah well, it was only a few licks before I stopped her.

Been wondering how many lights I could have for a grow without drawing suspicious amounts of electricity, and I found a cool little equation for determining how many total watts you're drawing. It really gives you a good idea of your power consumption. Not sure if this has been posted before...

First thing you need is the kh number, stamped on the face of the meter. It's probably 7.2, like mine. Then you count how many seconds it takes for the big wheel to spin around once, and plug it into this equation:

Watts = 3660 x kh ÷ seconds

I turned on a bunch of lights and the central AC, and it took 8 seconds to spin around once.

So 3660 x 7.2 ÷ 8 = 3294 Watts

Of course the AC doesn't run all the time, but it's still good to know I can draw over 3000 W under normal circumstances.

Turned off the AC, left the furnace fan running... 1145 Watts
Turned off the furnace fan... 750 Watts. Wow, that fan uses almost 400 Watts
Turned off my monitor... down to 710 Watts.
Turned off the PC... drawing 600 watts total.
I went around and turned off all the lights, radios, etc and got down to 300 Watts. That would be for the grow lights, fan, fridge, and misc. clocks, microwave, answering machine, etc.

Multiply your watt usage by .72 to get the monthly total kWh. A constant draw of 300 Watts is about 215 kWh per month. Average household usage in my area is 900 kWh.

So I could easily have 2 1000 Watt lights alternating 12/12. Even if I used 500 Watts constantly, plus the lights, that would bring my total to just over average.

To double check, I can see my neighbour's meter from my kitchen window. They use between 1500 and 2500 Watts constantly, without the AC on. So me running 2 1000 Watt lights would be no problem at all, if I minimize my usage of all the other little power gobblers.