I've only ever used HPS for flowering but have started using LED for veg and it works well, I get nice plants and don't use fancy or expensive lights.

LEDs have come a long way and I see they can grow beautiful buds but do they yield as well as their "HPS equivalent"?

I see a lot og places saying 270-300 watts of good quality LED replace 600w HPS.

With a 600 hps you can easily get .5 to .75 gram per watt and pull over a pound.

So my question is are you LED growers puling a LB or better from a 3x3 with LED?

I'd like to invest in an LED to save some energy and money but don't want to do it if I will sacrifice quality or yield in any way.

[Koondense]

There are many differences between leds and hids, the equivalent watts is just a parameter used by led makers to make their products sound superior or whatever.
Simple rule is, get somewhere 25-45w per square foot if you're buying leds, possibly with a dimmer.

With a decent led and decent growing you'll get 1-1,5 g/W so a pound in a 3x3 with 300W of good leds is possible, with 400W it's practically certain.
Take a look at Lumatek, ChilLed, HLG, Migro... all sell very good led lights.



Cheers

[Boyd Crowder]

yes - they will grow more for less
less heat less wattage more efficiency

roll your own strip lights for .5$ watt or spend 1+$ watt on the same thing in fancy cases/heatsinks

you can get by with 25w sft, but id shoo for 35-40 w/sqft in practice

you will run hotter rooms (80-85F) because they dont respire as much as hps

[hayday]

Every run I have done with leds have been over one gpw except
the last one. I have to say that was all my doing as I had some unhealthy and immature plants going in. My veg area got some root issues and everything sucked for a minute. Running hps for over. decade I was most likely right under a gpw the whole time and had to worry, struggle with heat,even lost a room full due to an a/c failure.

I still use t-5 and a hps for veg as led is too intense for my area. Zero head room...

Make the change to led, invest wisely in the finest diodes and you wont be sorry. Me, I would not buy cheap stuff off alibaba or amazon without knowing exactly what is being sold. Stick with a manufacturer who is selling good stuff.

[JJ Lowe]

Originally Posted by Boyd Crowder

yes - they will grow more for less
less heat less wattage more efficiency

roll your own strip lights for .5$ watt or spend 1+$ watt on the same thing in fancy cases/heatsinks

you can get by with 25w sft, but id shoo for 35-40 w/sqft in practice

you will run hotter rooms (80-85F) because they dont respire as much as hps

Can you direct me to a diy led build for the .5 per watt diy light?
Been looking around.. thanks!!

[Boyd Crowder]

goto arrow and find the samsung 2' 96 up 301b influx strips i thinks its the l09 i use the 5k cause they always in stock, and sometimes hit 5$ a strip - the redder strips are harder to find but you add red as needed anyways these 5000k hot 9300 lumens at 60~ watts

https://www.arrow.com/en/products/sl...ng-electronics again pricing can fluctuate wildly ive bought these for $4.50 before they dont always have the U temp in stock at 3500k


the drivers are also from arrow i use meanwells those big strips gonna need lotsa power
so i use a hlg 450 48v a or b depends on whats in stock
or a 600 watt meanwell

https://www.arrow.com/en/products/hl...ll-enterprises

this driver will run 9 of these strips above at 48v 1.38 A in parallel - you could get cute and drop ten in there as well to hit the sweet spot of efficiency this light will drop 85000 lumens - about 60% of a 1K HPS , so build 2 rigs for a true 4x4 footprint

, or if i can source inventronics 600 - they are about 55% the price of meanwells (but you do need to purchase a programming interface and work in series for your builds)


and heatsinks usa i use the 2.079 profile as an active design ( meaning the room fans , blowing over the lights will keep them cool enough to be happy - dedicate a fan or 2 per , itll make u feel better

https://www.heatsinkusa.com/2-079-wi...inum-heatsink/ these strips are 22.9 " long so get a 23 - 24" heatsink for $9 each x 10

youll need 23-24" to mount each strip, use double sided thermal tape, some aluminun l channel, wacos and redneck engineering and voila ,


i should just do a tutorial thread...

anyways , even after tariffs , i get a 600 watt 4x4 banger for about ~500$ including the bits and parts to get you in the club, after you have this stuff on hand yoiu will start tinkering and buying more drivers and strips to suit your needs, they are addicting, but so is saving 30-40% on hvac bills

this lite at 4x4 gives you 37.5 w/sqft

right in the sweet spot for leds

anyone wanna see a strip build? i dont recall seing a proper thread on icrag yet , just dions cob resource ( which is a bomb fucking thread!) maybe i did , its been awhile

so for a 600 watt that could blow the doors off a 600hps for around $375 after shipping and tarriffs
Yes u do need bits like 3way wacos that can handle the wattage
some 5 or ten up terminals
some solid copper wire , two side thermal tape
Al L channel and self tapping hvac screws
that stuff on hand allows you to build lights exactly for your room as well
i can do a vert a circlejerk or a SOG with as much or as little lights as i need

[Mars Hydro Led]

quantum board design LED is close to HPS.

[Boyd Crowder]

Originally Posted by Mars Hydro Led

quantum board design LED is close to HPS.

or you can spend some bread with our friends at mars or HLG and skip the diy stuff
they are the same leds as the samsung branded strips , excepting the color temp and in some cases a more expensive h version of the 301b chips (h="horticulture" CRI) the 301h which are newer

[prune]

LED proponents have some fancy math comparing watts to watts where they try to make an equilivency argument, but after doing both, I very much prefer HPS bud. It's bigger, greasier and stinkier.

Originally Posted by prune

LED proponents have some fancy math comparing watts to watts where they try to make an equilivency argument, but after doing both, I very much prefer HPS bud. It's bigger, greasier and stinkier.

What kind of LED light did you use? I have seen impressive results from higher end LEDs just as good if not better than a lot of bud I've seen grown under hps.

If you've grown weed for any amount of time you'd see that you can give 2 growers the same equipment and same strain, and get 2 very different results depending on the skill of the grower and the environment. I've seen many HPS grows where the quality and yield has been crap.

I only grow for myself these days but I still want to be able to grow a lot of plants for my own smoking and breeding. If I could do it at half the cost but maintain the same quality id be happy. A slight loss wouldn't kill me, but I think going from A 600hps to like a 315 CMH would be room limiting and how and metal halide have very clear and defined limitations, in how many plants I could grow.

Where I'm at with my HPS lights is basically they do great but can be expensive to run thru the summer with added A/C and ventilation. With LED running half the wattage id be better able to keep it cool enough without A/C.