---
title: "Microgreens Electricity and Water Costs: The Lights Were 3 Percent"
description: "In the one published microgreen room with a metered breakdown, air conditioning took 150 kWh of 188.4 and two LED lamps took 5.4. US rates run 12.35 to 52.00 cents, so use your own bill."
url: "https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/electricity-and-water-costs/"
lang: "en"
published: "2026-08-12"
modified: "2026-08-12"
image: "https://microgreensguru.com/og/selling-microgreens-guides-electricity-and-water-costs.jpg"
---

# Electricity and Water: The Lights Were 3 Percent of the Bill

[Cal Hewitt](https://microgreensguru.com/about/cal-hewitt/)Published August 12, 2026

- electricity
- water
- costs
- business planning
- selling microgreens

**If you are budgeting a grow room by adding up your lights, you are costing the smallest line on the bill. In the one published room with a metered breakdown, the lights came to 2.9 percent and the air conditioning took 79.6.**

## What to actually do

- **Budget the climate control, not just the lights.** In the one metered breakdown available, cooling was 79.6 percent and lighting was 2.9.
- **Treat your lights as a heat source as well as a load**, because the second load exists to remove the heat the first one makes.
- **Price everything off your own bill**, including the fixed charges. A 4.2-fold spread across states makes any average a placeholder.
- **Measure the fixture at the wall, not on the box.** A lighting cost is calculable only from measured wall kilowatt-hours, actual lit hours and your own tariff.
- **Do not budget a rack from lights alone.** That is the specific error the 188.4 kWh room demonstrates.
- **Do not spend long on water.** Under 1 percent in the one model that broke it out, and the effort is better spent on the other three lines.
- **If you are in a warm climate, the cooling line is your energy budget**, and the room in that study is the closest published analogue to it.

## The one room anyone has broken down

**A 2024 study reported 188.4 kWh over 15 days for 12 square meters of microgreen production, and it published where the power went.**

Where 188.4 kWh went over 15 days

| What | kWh | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **A 12,000 BTU/h air conditioner** | **150.0** | **79.6 percent** |
| A floor fan | 33.0 | 17.5 percent |
| **Two 20 W LED lamps** | **5.4** | **2.9 percent** |

**The three components sum to 188.4 exactly**, so the breakdown reconciles with its own total and you can work from the shares rather than just the headline.

**Cooling drew twenty-eight times what the lighting did.** If your own plan has one line for lights and nothing for climate control, that is the gap to close first.

**Read the limits before carrying it anywhere.** This is a warm-climate, air-conditioned room in Sonora, and the study's own authors describe the consumption as an estimate rather than a meter reading of a commercial operation. **It does not establish that cooling beats lighting everywhere.** It establishes that a lighting-only calculation can be wrong by a factor of thirty, and that is enough to change how a plan is built.

**A second source points the same way independently.** [A 2022 research paper](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.983222/full) identifies LED heat and moisture from plant transpiration as major reasons plant factories need extensive air conditioning. **The lights are not just a load. They are a heat source that a second load then has to remove.**

## A national average will not price your bill

**US residential electricity in May 2026 ran from 12.35 cents per kilowatt-hour to 52.00 cents, depending on the state.** That is a **4.2-fold spread**, and it means the national figure is a poor basis for anybody's plan.

**Here is what that spread does to a real number.** [The fans review](https://microgreensguru.com/product-reviews/air-circulation-and-fans/) prices continuous running at the EIA May 2026 US residential average of **18.44 cents**. Re-priced across the real state range:

A year of continuous running, at three real US rates

| Product | Watts | At 12.35c | At 18.44c, as published | At 52.00c |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Vivosun D4 clip fan | 4 W | $4.33 | $6.46 | **$18.22** |
| Vivosun E9 clip fan | 18 W | $19.47 | $29.08 | **$81.99** |
| Vivosun A6 clip fan | 38 W | $41.11 | $61.38 | **$173.10** |

**The same fan costs $41 or $173 a year depending on where you plug it in.** A national average is a correct national average and it is still not your number.

**Use your own bill.** Not a national average, not a state average, the rate on your last statement including whatever fixed monthly charge sits under it.

## Where energy actually lands in a full cost model

**One published model breaks out utilities against everything else.** A 2021 Welsh cost model for a 48 square meter, four-level controlled-environment operation assigns:

- **Electricity: £7,123 a year from 59,357.76 kWh, which is 6 percent of direct costs**
- **Water and CO₂ together: £55, under 1 percent**
- Consumables: 36 percent
- Labor: 24 percent
- Packaging and packing: 15 percent

**So, in that model energy is a real but modest line and water is a rounding error.** That is a cost model rather than surveyed accounts, and it is one operation in one climate at one tariff.

**Two cautions before you set that against any other labor figure.** Its 24 percent labor share is a share of a whole operation's direct costs, which is **not the same denominator** as [the labor guide's](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/labor-and-time-per-tray/) finding that labor is 49 to 69 percent of a single tray's cash inputs. Those two numbers are not in conflict; they are answers to different questions and should not be averaged. And a second published model reports a 34.7 percent operating margin without publishing a comparable utilities share at all.

## Water is the cheap one, and the bill is not just the water

**Nothing in the opened sources makes water a significant microgreen cost.** The Welsh model puts water and CO₂ together under 1 percent.

**But the volumetric charge is not the whole bill.** Water and sewer are frequently billed together, and fixed service charges vary materially between utilities. A grower on a metered commercial connection and one on a domestic supply are not paying the same structure even at the same nominal rate.

**Which is the same instruction as the electricity.** Take it off your bill.

## What nobody has measured

- **A metered breakdown of a real commercial microgreen operation**, anywhere. The 188.4 kWh figure is a study's estimate for a 12 square meter room.
- **A climate map or a crossover point** at which cooling overtakes lighting.
- **Energy per tray or per pound of crop**, from any source, which is the unit a grower actually needs.
- **A utilities share of total operating costs** from surveyed financial statements rather than a cost model.
- **Water use per tray**, as a figure separate from general irrigation guidance.
- **Whether a home grower's marginal energy cost differs from a commercial one** in any measured way.

### Terms on this page

**kWh.** A kilowatt-hour, the unit your electricity is billed in. A 40 W device left on for 25 hours uses one.

**Volumetric charge.** The part of a water bill that scales with what you use, as opposed to the fixed service charge that does not.

**Controlled environment agriculture.** Growing indoors with managed light, temperature and humidity. The category the cost models on this page belong to.

**Direct costs.** The costs attributable to producing the crop, before overheads. The denominator in the Welsh model's percentages.

**BTU per hour.** A cooling capacity rating. The 12,000 BTU/h unit in the study is a common domestic room air conditioner size.

**Transpiration.** Water moving through the plant and evaporating from its leaves. It is why a grow room needs moisture removed as well as heat.

## Sources

Opened 2026-08-12. The three-rate fan table is arithmetic done here from the published wattages in the fans review and the EIA state rate range below. The percentage shares of the 188.4 kWh room are computed from the study's own component figures, which sum to its stated total.

- [Energy and economic assessment of microgreen production, 2024 (SciELO Mexico)](https://classic.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?lng=en&nrm=iso&pid=S0187-73802024000100053&script=sci_abstract&tlng=en) - the 188.4 kWh over 15 days for 12 square meters, broken into 150 kWh for a 12,000 BTU/h air conditioner, 33 kWh for a floor fan and 5.4 kWh for two 20 W LED lamps, the 2021 Sonora household tariff total of MXN 215.01 including VAT, the 34.7 percent operating margin, and the authors' own description of the consumption as an estimate.
- [Business Wales, controlled environment agriculture report, 2021 (PDF)](https://businesswales.gov.wales/foodanddrink/sites/foodanddrink/files/43095_CEA%20English%20final%2004092021_Web.pdf) - the 48 square meter, four-level model assigning £7,123 a year of electricity from 59,357.76 kWh at 6 percent of direct costs, water and CO₂ at £55 and under 1 percent, consumables 36 percent, labor 24 percent and packaging 15 percent.
- [Frontiers in Plant Science, plant factory environmental control, 2022](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.983222/full) - that LED heat and moisture from plant transpiration are major reasons plant factories require extensive air conditioning, which is the independent support for the finding that lights are a heat source as well as a load.
- [US Energy Information Administration, average price of electricity by state](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?pubDate=20250509&t=epmt_5_6_a) - the May 2026 US residential range of 12.35 to 52.00 cents per kilowatt-hour by state, and the 18.44 cent national average used in the fan table.

## Keep reading

- Selling guides

    ### Microgreens Profit and Margins: What Missouri's Enterprise Budget Shows

    University of Missouri Extension's budget models income over total cost at $5.84 to $19.45 a tray, for one greenhouse system at Missouri rates. Promotional pages quote $12 to $54, which is revenue rather than profit.

    [Read Microgreens Profit and Margins: What Missouri's Enterprise Budget Shows](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/profit-and-margins/)
- Selling guides

    ### Minutes Per Tray: The Cost Every Microgreens Business Plan Leaves Out

    Two institutions publish a per-tray time: 6.8 to 9.5 minutes and 15. At real wages that is $2.21 to $5.00 of labor against a median $1.09 of seed, so the input everyone prices is the smallest one.

    [Read Minutes Per Tray: The Cost Every Microgreens Business Plan Leaves Out](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/labor-and-time-per-tray/)
- Selling guides

    ### What to Charge for Microgreens: Every Observed Price, in One Unit

    Converted to one unit, the observed prices run from $2.65 to $22.05 per 100 g, an 8.3-fold spread. At the bottom of it a tray has to yield 3 to 7 ounces just to cover its own labor.

    [Read What to Charge for Microgreens: Every Observed Price, in One Unit](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/pricing-and-what-to-charge/)
- The test bench

    ### Timers for Microgreens: The Same $8 Timer Pays Back in Two Months or Four Years

    What a timer saves you depends entirely on the wattage of the thing it switches, and the three guides that recommend one never mention load. That same missing number is also the safety number.

    [Read Timers for Microgreens: The Same $8 Timer Pays Back in Two Months or Four Years](https://microgreensguru.com/product-reviews/timers-and-controllers/)