led prices irational

[Phychotron]

I dont mind doing the math, but lets do actual math not theoretical. Hell I bet if I actually put in the effort for that crop it'd be about a pound or two more. The one plant that I wasn't able to trim very well ended up doing 11 oz by itself, with the lower buds still nice and dense.


How many watts does it take to run a 600w bulb? Its going to take math and a meter to find out, but its a lot more than what is printed on your bulb box.

The reason HID sucks is because its primarily IR light that turns to heat on the surface of the leaf (and everything it touches.) It makes you have to lower the temperature below where the plants like it because it drives the cooling of the leaf. With LED you cut out having to radiate IR waves that transfer to heat which needs to be cooled off of every surface it touches. Instead you pump the heat out the top of the fixture and the plants can sit in the 80's where they like to be. Those HID bulbs crisp your leaves up.

 

[Jnugg]

General rule if thumb is an HID uses 10% more energy than the bulb is rated...for a 400w HID that's 440w and a 600w HID that's 660w.

LED's are only efficient for light spectrum and amount of energy used to run,but can't compete with canopy penetration.

I haven't dealt with crispy leaves other than back in the day running 80w per square foot which is way above the 50w per square foot minimum and the 66w per square foot maximum.

 

[Phychotron]

The ballasts take power too. Depending on equipment you can take up to 3x the wattage of the bulb to actually run. Without testing you can only guess. http://www.drugs-forum.com/growfaq/1672.htm

You sound like stepped right out of a 2011 time machine. You gotta get the right fixture and you can solve all those problems. I get a few feet of penetration.

LED has a few factors that just seem to be too complex for you, such as lens angle and diode wattage. I can understand if you can't grasp the idea that there are HID alternatives that can do better, but it is coming to that age where technology is now out dating traditional bulbs in general.

 

[rives]

The ballasts take power too. Depending on equipment you can take up to 3x the wattage of the bulb to actually run. Without testing you can only guess. http://www.drugs-forum.com/growfaq/1672.htm

While I agree with much of what you are saying, that link is total bullshit. It would have been interesting to see what the fixture was pulling on a wattmeter (kill-a-watt), which is critical in determining the power factor. There is no way that a healthy HID lamp/ballast combination is pulling 3x the rated wattage - usually 10-15% of the current is lost to the ballast, and in many instances substantially less. My 315w CDM ballasts run about 8% (315w lamp, 341w total consumption).

Also, the power company has no way to bill you for a lousy power factor unless they have special metering on your facility, like an industrial plant has. Conventional meters are incapable of measuring power factor, and there is no place on a residential billing to even charge for it - you pay for watts, not V/A.

 

[Jnugg]

From my hydro shop...

As manufacturers continue to make outrageous claims about LED and Induction lighting and consumers continue to get sucked into the hype, we at Simply Hydroponics have continued to do our own testing in an effort to "shed some light" on the subject. Our reputation for trustworthy information and over twenty years of great customer loyalty depend on us always directing you to the best products for achieving a maximum yield garden.
Having done test after test, with lights from various manufacturers, we have come time and again to the same conclusion which simply stated, is that a watt is still a watt. Claims that a 300-400 watt LED will perform equivalent to a 1000 watt high pressure sodium are totally and completely false but it will probably do about as well as a 400 watt high pressure sodium.
We enjoy giving our customers the opportunity to see for themselves. We have both LED and Induction lights available to loan to anyone wanting to run their own side by side comparison. Many customers have taken advantage of that over the years and not one of them has ever opted to purchase either.
Unlike many of the folks who write the glowing articles about these lights we have no vested interest beyond your satisfaction. If they lived up to the claims, we would have no reason to tell you otherwise. Quite the contrary; we would be enthusiastically recommending them to you.
It is our consistent finding and the consistent findings of our customers that for high power flowering, there is still nothing that out performs a high pressure sodium.


Well,if LED's go for more money than an HID of similar wattage,I know my shop isn't about ripping me off.

 

[Jnugg]

Your seriously bragging about 37g/sq-ft? got 49 off the last crop in a 4x6 area. Thats 42 ounces btw. All LED.

View Image

You failed to mention wattage used.

 

[Phychotron]

Well your hydro shop proves it then, those hydro store pepper and tomato grows are very definitive in bud production.

They stand to make more money selling you bulbs all the time, rather than a 10 yr product with higher up front profit. Hydro shops are at the lowest end of LED research its not even funny. The overhead required to offer LED's is a bit too much for them to get serious about it. Plus the bullshit on the market that they're talking about IS EVERYWHERE. Granted it is hard to find a good vendor because of it, the fact is that you can find a high quality LED that produces fat buds with great penetration.


On a kill-a-watt it was with 1420w, and I checked my numbers again and it was 44oz (1233g). And since you like to get theoretical, at 11 possible per plant, 6 plants thats 66oz, making my made up number 10 oz higher than your made up number. The wattage is a little higher and efficiency not as high because I do have some of those cheaper generic lights your hydro store offers. I just got another LED today that should help out.

A real test of efficiency is to know your total electricity used in kw-h, for ALL your equipment, lights cooling, fans--anything with significance. That grow was 0.61g/kw-h total electricity. Or 0.9g/kw-h just lighting.

Rives, I know the meter just spins and they read that, but the newer smart meters can tell you how much your using and when. The info is available online from the power company. I don't know what else they're doing with them, but its a bit scary should they ever analyze to see if you have any 12/12 or 18/6 power spikes every day. (new world order stuff ) 3x is a big number to todays equipment standards but its still just a guess if you don't put it on a meter.

 

[Jnugg]

Well when it comes to my mag ballast,I've had it for over 8 years now,replace the bulbs once a year (just the standard $20 bulb) never had to replace any ballast parts and she still fires up to full brightness...pretty damn efficient if you ask me.

 

[Jnugg]

And in your space with 2x 600w HPS's I know for a fact that 1.5 pounds per light is easily acheivable and equates to 1344g or 1.12 gpw....more efficient then the 1233g or .86 gpw you got.

 

[Phychotron]

Again, using the box's wattage is not going to allow you to compare. 10% more like you were saying bring it to about 1g/w. What does it ACTUALLY USE?

And if you have to run an air conditioner to cool it then your gonna need to factor in that wattage somehow if you want to look into efficiency. Fans draw a lot too, about 150w for an 8" in line, running the whole time the light is on.

Bud quality being the real issue, it is possible to get the highest quality nugs with dense buds all the way down the plant if you get a good quality LED from a reputable dealer.

Chopped early on day 51 of flower

 

[rives]

Rives, I know the meter just spins and they read that, but the newer smart meters can tell you how much your using and when. The info is available online from the power company. I don't know what else they're doing with them, but its a bit scary should they ever analyze to see if you have any 12/12 or 18/6 power spikes every day. (new world order stuff ) 3x is a big number to todays equipment standards but its still just a guess if you don't put it on a meter.

Yep, the new meters are scary indeed. I was just pointing out that the article is very flawed - the author is using some circular logic to make his point, and is presenting some very erroneous information.

Power factor is actually the difference in phase angle between the current and voltage sine waves. At unity (power factor of 1), they overlay one another and Volts x Amps = Watts, like in a DC circuit. As AC circuits power larger and larger inductive or capacitive loads, the sine waves spread apart and the phase angle between the two simply becomes waste heat at the transformer.

For AC, the wattage formula is V x A x power factor = watts. The author assumes the lamp wattage from the lamp rating (instead of measuring the total circuit wattage), and then contrasts it with the formula for DC wattage to arrive at the power factor.

Doesn't work.

Sorry this got overly technical in a hurry, but I used to deal with this shit all the time and it jumped out at me.

 

[aridbud]

Well,if LED's go for more money than an HID of similar wattage,I know my shop isn't about ripping me off.

Ohhh??

 

[Smoking Lamp]

Everybody has missed the most parts to compare....Par, umols and LER. There are documented grows of 300w [actual watts 2x A51 SGS and 1.5 lbs yields. Dawg. {not trying to be an ass, just a clue :0]

the apache at600 penetrates better than a 1000w HPS @ 24", the problem with Led fixtures for a while has been overwhelming brightness in the middle portions but losing PAR [>600umols] in the corners, but with reflector technology improving, penetration is not an issue at all, check Ledil.

Also an HPS is about 31% efficient overall, meaning that 31% of the overall power consumed is actually going to useable plant light. Some of the good led's are pushing that and maybe going 35%, A good DIY with Cree CXA3070 or higher will push you to 39%, spend bigger money on a top shelf DIY LED and you could push closer to 45%+ efficiency.

If sulfur induction hadn't b invented, I would say LED will stick around may as long as the incandescent in the next phase of lighting, but......

 

[Jnugg]

And just how many of those 1420w leds did you use?!

 

[Hold Your Fire]

"Alex, you forget smoking lamp."


Avoiding the argument, nice grow Phycho.

 

[Phychotron]

Avoiding the argument, nice grow Phycho.

Thanks, I just got a new GrowBlu Apollo 240x3w pulling 500w to replace the cheaper Blackstar fixtures, ~530w. Not just less wattage but also more efficient of a fixture. The idea was to get 3 Advanced LED DS400's for a 4x6' area, as they are the right shape for great coverage in a 4' wide area. Now I have to decide if I'll get another Apollo or DS400 depending on which does better.

 

[Phychotron]

And just how many of those 1420w leds did you use?!

1420w on a Kill-a-watt.

 

[PetFlora]

Based on MSRP, some certainly think their lights are equivalent to a Bentley

The good news IMHO is...

we do not need Bentleys

Apache Tech is a Bentley equivalent. A51 has an excellent high efficient light for about half the AT, but is still pricey for some

What I learned from 3 years using an 8 bulb Quantum Bad Boy and in another tent multiple ufo 90s (different spectrums) + led tube lights + household retrofit led lights is: all panels/lights have a sweet spot which is roughly within 15" of the panel.

Providing even distribution throughout is more important than bombarding one part of that area with a point source light (hps/mh) or even a single led panel of high wattage.

You can increase penetration by having multiple lights on slightly different angles

Most commercial led offerings have low efficiency (~20%) from which the lens covers and glass protectors take away ~ 20% of that. No wonder there are so many haters.

The new generation led lights use cobs + reflectors. They are simpler, and provide better performance than the old tech of spreading diodes all over a board. They are also easier to repair/upgrade. They look alike, but there are differences.

Grow Evolution has piggyback capability and supposedly a proprietary cob, but LEDPlantLight costs a lot less

I have seen several grows using his style and they are kickin it

LED tech still has a lot of advances in the making, so why fork over big money now?

This new cob + reflector makes DIY pretty straight forward. Those guys are using high quality and more efficient cobs hitting ~ 40% efficiency

 

[flat9]

LED's are only efficient for light spectrum and amount of energy used to run,but can't compete with canopy penetration.

This is just plain wrong, period. I know it is a commonly stated assertion that LEDs do not penetrate the canopy (I blindly believed the same thing), but in fact just the opposite is true. They have BETTER penetration at the cost of worse coverage. A graphic on HGL's own page confirms this:

Cannabis thrives at around 1000 - 1500 umol/(s x m^2) for an evenly balanced spectrum (ref: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3550641/). Note how to get to 1000 micromoles, you effectively have a 2 x 2 footprint for the LED model, whereas for the HPS you have about a 3 x 3 footprint.

Now why is penetration better? Well, more photons concentrated on a smaller footprint. It's not like photons emitted from LEDs magically disappear whereas they wouldn't for HPS; the more photons you have concentrated in a smaller space, the more they can penetrate through the canopy. Much rather, it's that an HPS with a good reflector is much better at distributing the radiation over a larger space (better coverage), whereas the lenses employed for LEDs as well as the spacing of the pods seem to concentrate the emitted energy in smaller space.

Also see the tests from Grower's House, for similar results if you don't buy HGL's footprint given that it's not an independent test (e.g., http://growershouse.com/images/ALTEST_infographic_1.pdf).

 

[flat9]

I haven't dealt with crispy leaves other than back in the day running 80w per square foot which is way above the 50w per square foot minimum and the 66w per square foot maximum.

Who decides the mins and maxes? I think in general it's more about ensuring you can maintain proper temps and RH than it is about meeting some pre-specified criteria determined by the canna grow gods on these sites! I think a lot of times people try to replicate the results of others but there are so many variables to account for that it's hard to isolate what caused what, so take any "tried and true" rule with a grain of salt given that it is not scientific.

From that paper I mentioned in my prior post, we should be aiming to get a uniform canopy of about 1500 umol per sec per sq meter (caveat: I think this assumes an even spectrum of light, whereas the absorption rates for photosynthesis are different for different wavelengths, and for LEDs you could probably aim for about 1000 and do quite well) and temps of 80-85 F for 55% RH. The number of watts per unit area to achieve this will vary depending on the type of radiation, the reflectors, the distance from the canopy, etc. Better to get an idea of the PPFD of your lighting source and understand its coverage than to just throw x, y, and z at it based upon the experience of others and assume it to be correct.

Aside: the machine they used to evaluate the rate of photosynthesis in that paper also was pretty amazingly cool. I'd love to get me one of these:
http://www.licor.com/env/products/photosynthesis/