Cannabis Grow Operation Electricity Consumption Estimates

When trying to find out how much your cannabis grow operation is going to cost in electricity, it would be nice to find a formula. Look no further. 3 very intelligent students wrote an abstract to quantify the actual wattage used for a typical grow operation in both California, Colorado and Canada.

Energy Consumption Model for Indoor Cannabis Cultivation Facility

NAFEESA MEHBOOB (Senior Member, IEEE),
HANY E. Z. FARAG (Senior Member, IEEE),
AND ABDULLAH M. SAWAS (Student Member, IEEE)
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: N. MEHBOOB
This research work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC) through the NSERC Engage Grant program in partnership with Braingrid Corporation, award number EGP 537780-2018.

ABSTRACT The recent legalization of cannabis is facilitating very rapid growth in the cannabis cultivation industry, with the energy intensive indoor cultivation facilities becoming more prevalent. This presents a challenge to utilities as the high energy demand from this industry can overburden the existing utility infrastructure. Hence, from both planning and operational perspectives, it is crucial to understand the energy consumption of the rapidly growing load. This paper proposes a deterministic energy consumption model for indoor cannabis cultivation operations for the two major loads in these facilities, i.e., lighting and HVAC, over a 24-hour period based on equipment specifications and operational requirements of the facility. This model can further be used to estimate or forecast short-term and long-term energy demands and costs of indoor cannabis operation(s). The proposed model successfully simulated the environmental conditions in a real-world cannabis facility, and the model’s energy consumption output is validated using actual measurements taken from this facility as well as model output using GridLab-D.