Even after seeing some of the grows done right such as Verdant Green, i think that LED's are more comparable to CFL's, not HID with the exception of anything <250w....just my opinion...trying to justify it next to HID will be the future.
My dads working with a company right now who produces lights for arena lighting and parking/street lights with LED's. I think they range from 25w for the street lights to 100w's for arena's...
I think there is a lot of hype when it comes to the really expensive LED panels. I use LEDs I got from here http://www.thegreenleaf.biz/LED_Lights.html. I run 90w tri band UFOs and I am very happy with them. For the price of a 1000w system I got 3 90w ufos. So far without c02 growing SOG i get .5oz per plant. I also struggled to keep my rooms temps in check (my grow is in an attic) so the plants were abused a bit by the heat. Im predicting that when I am able to fully control my grow environment and add c02 I will easily be able to achieve 1 oz per plant or 1.88grams per watt. I use my leds in flower only I use shop lights for clone and CFLs for veg.
Ive got a buddy that bought 8 of those 600w Stealthgrow LED panels the ones that cost over $1500 each they work somewhat differently than the LEDs I use in that their LEDs are 2w diodes and they are 60deg diodes where as my leds are 120deg. Meaning his penetrate deeper and mine cover a wider area. Getting to the point he isnt satisfied with his leds at all hes actually switching over to HIDs now.
The hydro store I buy the majority of my equipment at is a hydrofarm retailer. The owner is always asking me about my grow and how my leds are working for me because he says that everyone hes sold an LEd system to has been very displeased with it. Im not sure how they are growing but I can tell you that if you want to run LEDs your going to have to train your plants by either LST Scrog or you can do what I do and go SOG. My thinking on all this is that you buy LEDs to save money on electricity if the ultimate goal is saving money why buy a light thats costs $1500 or even $400 each its going to take you a long time to make that money back in savings over an HID if your not saving that much money what the point?
GLH released a bunch of new lights in the past few days. Another option worth looking into.
I am pretty interested an LED around 150-200 watts myself, with a rectangular form factor.
so far all I have seen worth buying in a Stealthgrow. I visited these guys when I was out in cali last month. these guys are OFFICIAL, saw the medical R&D garden, ladies veggin, tried some finished stuff from their last run, OFFICIAL is all I can say. I was blown away.
talk about a SG602 (their "600" w model) out performing a brand new hortilux 1000W superHPS in a SS ballast...Advanced nutes, coco/perlite mix, same everything. the growth under the LED was slightly more lush and lookin a day or 2 ahead of the HPS, and the 602 only draws about 350 watts!! SICK if u ask me.
then if u wanna talk about finished buds, it rocked my head off. super dense, super frosted out blue dream, looked smelled tasted amazing, tore me up. since then Iv been trying to put as many ppl that come into our shop onto them as I can, after I harv, Im def. gonna get one. I think if u slap a 602 in a 4x4 tent youd have better results than 1000w HPS. I saw it w my own eyes.
XPE are still good. How do they become bad when new ones come out?Any commercial grow lights using Cree XP-G emitters?
The XP-E's are sooo 2009.
In the LED game, nothing is the best for long. Next year, there will be brighter, cheaper and more efficient emitters than this year and so on and so on.
Unlike the proven HID and CFL, nothing is best in this field for long.
The UFO came out in 2006? That's ancient tech compared to what Cree and Luxeon are putting out right now. I'll bet that POS uses some cheap chinese knock off LEDs which dont hold a candle to the new XP-G R5, Q5 or S2 emitters.
You guys are chasing your tails with LEDs. It's like trying to have the fastest smartphone.
Six months from now, your shit is outdated.
I'm completely sold on LEDs. The tech is here NOW and the DIY'ers among us can already have what we're all "waiting for" if you will.
It's just you can't really find a single distributor with a fair price that is forthcoming about what bins they use, square centimeters of their heatsinks, etc.
On top of that, one of the WORST problems with the commercial LED market is the conformity of footprints. You have the damn annoying UFO shapes, or you can get a 15.75 x 8.5 x 2.75'' rectangle with way too many diodes crammed into it. Other than that forget it pretty much, all US distributors seem to use the same housings from the same chinese manufacturers.
In that regard, HGL lights are actually appealing to me. At least they have different shapes, ie the 63w is a nice size/footprint for the amount of LEDs for a micro grow. OF course, it can't be that simple because of the shitstorms we've heard about her.
I digress. Frustrating market atm