Electriticy, Hours of Light, etc.

I did some spreadsheet maths using the equations AG provided here -- How much energy does the AeroGarden use?

Using .14 per kilowatt hour, which is the average price around my part of the country, I calculated the following monthly costs for the four classes of AG --

Sprout -- 82 cents a month
Harvest -- 1.45 a month
Bounty -- 3.02 a month
Farm -- 7.94 a month

This assumes 15 hours a day for 30 days.

I also found that shortening the light time an hour saves very little --

Sprout -- 5 cents a month per machine
Harvest -- 10 cents a month per machine

Bounty -- 20 cents a month per machine

Farm -- 53 cents a month per machine


The savings comes in shutting down units. If I had five Farms, I'd be paying about 40 bucks a month in electricity. Shutting down one unit cuts that by 20 percent, whereas cutting back the lights by an hour only saves 6.67 percent.

For me, with 5 Harvests and 2 Bounties and a rate of .14 per kWh, I'm paying a little over 13 dollars a month to power my AGs. Not much, but it still needs to be taken into account when doing a cost benefit analysis. 

Here's the spreadsheet. Feel free to check my maths. If anyone wants it, let me know, and I'll figure out how to get it to you.



Conclusion -- Sprouts and Harvests are relatively cheap to run. Bounties and Farms, not so much. A room full of Farms can quickly eat up your gardening allowance.

tdse, electricity in California is very expensive, too. I haven't done the math, but my experience with the electric bill supports your conclusions. The real savings come from running fewer gardens. (A rule of thumb for a Bounty is that it requires the electricity of a 60-watt incandescent light bulb--I think I got that from the AG post about electric usage.)

At the moment I'm running three Farms and six Bounties, which is as much as I have time for anyhow. I justify the expense as a hobby--ya gotta do some things that give you pleasure! It's less expensive than my knitting and LEGO hobbies; it saves a little on the grocery bill; and it saves a lot on buying flowers from a nursery for the patio display in my avatar!

Thank you & I do agree    I have to look at it this way - I don't spend a lot, spend almost nothing in gas (work from home), rarely eat out...and my gardens do bring me joy.
And they save me a TON of money vs. buying seedlings in the spring for my outside garden.  

Your patio flowers are beautiful!

Our electricity costs $0.389 per kwh for off-peak usage, and $0.428 per kwh for peak usage. On our plan, peak usage is weekdays from 5 to 8 pm. We could lower the bill slightly by choosing a plan that charges for peak usage between 4 and 9 pm, but that's awfully inconvenient.

Our bills are going up by an average 30% in January, to pay for undergrounding power lines everywhere, to prevent wildfires. (And maybe to make it possible to buy fire insurance for homes again.)

Fortunately, I support this! It was too much when an overhead power line sparked a fire that burned down the whole city of Paradise, CA a few years ago.

The only significant alternative is to go solar. We would probably do that if the power would stay on during general outages, but it doesn't unless you pay more for special equipment.