I used to but I sold all the solar stuff now I’m just using LEDs to keep electric bill down MH/HPS is so costly
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Here too! We put up a greenhouse last winter and want to fit it with a solar panel for lights and a fan.
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Use a 12 volt power inverter
There’s billboards all along the highway in southeastern MA, for a dispensary and farm called Solar Farms. They claim their whole operation runs on 100% solar. That would require a lot of panels and batteries. Not sure if its true, but I really like the idea.
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Solar Cannabis Co. | Recreational Cannabis Dispensaries
Solar Cannabis Co.
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Trouble is the high cost. You really need a pure sine wave inverter, which in my case will be excessively large and expensive for the size of system I’m looking to set up. (A several hundred to a couple thousand dollars)
If you look at my reply (no 30) I’m thinking I’ll just wire up my own 12v light. Which is significantly cheaper and allows for customisation. It won’t be a problem as I have some electrical and electronics experience.
For a larger system however I would agree with just using an inverter. Most likely for a system reaching the several hundred watt to multiple kilowatt power consumption range.
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Wondering if you could salvage a battery from a scrapped hybrid Honda or Toyota?
yep. forklifts are also a good place to salvage them from and refurb them.
Not quite off-grid here… I do have solar power that covers most of my electric bills, but I’m still connected to the grid. 
Batteries are the main issue, though I’m also being paid a few thousand a year in renewable energy credits to keep me on the grid for now. Once the credits get near expiration I’ll start looking seriously at battery solutions, though that might also mean getting more solar panels. Not sure if I’ve started using more power, or if the ones I have are just generating less due to the expected decline in efficiency, or both, but I’m occasionally paying a few bucks a month past the $3.25 for transmission.
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This thread is rocking and I am loving all the DIY people that are researching for information and putting up those ideas and questions. We are on the road to successful solutions for lowering are cost and dependency on big companies that only want to profit. 
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Perhaps a shed for battery backup storage might be a good solution.
the main problem you have is days that don’t have full sun. most of the time, if you run your lights in the daytime, the panels can run the lights and charge the batteries. you may need a little more capacity than just straight running them this way though. like an extra panel and an extra battery. i don’t know the math to figure it out.
the only problem with a shed is it has to be close or you lose voltage on the length of wire.
maybe it’s just the weed talking, but i seem to recall a way to bring sunlight through a series of mirrors and prisms to use it inside buildings. i wonder if that would be a feasible way to supplement electricity?
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Looked into that a while back when I was first getting set up… they’re cheaper now, used to be over a thousand for installation even in simple cases. It wouldn’t really be feasible for me though, growing in the basement. It’s definitely a feasible option for some setups though, and long-term it almost has to pay off. Tough to get cheaper than free. There are a few brands, this is just the most popular one that Bob Vila’s getting paid to hawk. 
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i was thinking of piping into basements and crap, turning corners and directing the light. you’d lose some but like you said, hard to get cheaper than free. once the mirrors are set they cost nothing.
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Oh those new light tunnels are amazing! They certainly have dropped in price and become easier to find, I’d like to do that when we replace the slate roof on our house with steel in another decade or two and pipe some more natural light down through the full attic into the second floor bedrooms with those sorts of things.
Years ago, I used to date a woman whose parents were old engineers and all of their friends were too, or math/physics/fabricator folks all in Ithaca NY. One couple did this big renovation of their small but cozy house that didn’t have many large windows and instead of hacking out bigger holes for new larger windows, they used a light pipe system like this but theirs was fiberoptic from a big rooftop collector that rotated like a solar panel on a radio antenna turntable to follow the sun, then the fibers split down into the couple lightless rooms. It was a custom build by someone local using the Parans light plumbing system which was brand new at the time, I think the rotating collector was their adaptation of it, a lot of that group were into ham and other radio stuff. I want to use Parans gear to do my house with someday, I dream about having a solar collector on the roof just for a future basement grow chamber that’s partially sunlit how cool would that be 
I hope that we keep seeing reductions in price and increases in efficiency. They did that fifteen years ago and it cost a lot, something like $10k or more for the whole system and install but I guess they didn’t have the room or building structure to use tubes instead.
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