[cdog]

Does anyone know with relative certainty which 1000W HPS lights work best in a greenhouse? I heard once that there are some Canadian greenhouses that were using the best ones just haven't been able to track down which kind they were. Thanks

[Primalraindrop]

I hear that Gavita Holland lights are where its at. Im sure someone else on this forum may have experience with these. I just started gettting greenhouses going. My next purchases is to get some gavita lights to use for the winter hopefully.

[vostok]

Any ballast that has a earth pin in the plug ...lol

[megayields]

Only "supplemental" lighting I used was strings of 100w bulbs all we wanted to do was make sure they didn't go into flower and we are some cheap ass mothers also...I would think any decent Halides would do great. Good luck!

[StressCase]

Originally Posted by cdog

Does anyone know with relative certainty which 1000W HPS lights work best in a greenhouse? I heard once that there are some Canadian greenhouses that were using the best ones just haven't been able to track down which kind they were. Thanks

To directly answer your question; without a doubt the best 1000w HPS lights on the market for a greenhouse application are Gavita/Papillon. These are using modern 400v double ended bulbs. They give off less heat, produce more light and produce more light in the part of the spectrum usable to plants. This is just a brief rundown, there's more to it but you probably get the idea.

Like megayields said, sometimes a string of 100w CFL's are all you need if your intent is just to prevent flower.

Right now I'm running FarmTek 1000w HPS fictures w/Hortilux bulbs in my greenhouse because I couldn't get Papillon/Gavita lights when I first built my setup. If I were to replace them today I'd almost certainly use Papillon/Gavita lights for sure.

Regarding LED, Metal Halide, etc: I (shamefully) own some Diamond Series 800 LED's from Advanced LED. While I wasn't happy with them indoor I think they might do okay in a greenhouse where you have sunlight to fill in the spectrum. I don't really light how much light I think they'd block though.

Metal Halide should produce better results during veg of course but I think you'll get a pretty similar outcome with second gen HPS + sunlight.

There's other stuff but it takes too long to address all the edge cases.

If you want to see the lighting setup in my GH... https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=280408