LED vs HPS cost differential

[VladimirPutin]

Does living at altitude really affect LED's? I'm at 9200 feet...


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Yea, as a result of the high altitude, indoor temps are much lower than at sea level.

I was mid 60F's and plants grew miserably slow under a 180W LED.

Switching out to the 150 CMH, infrared and ultraviolet heat gave the plants the kick in the roots to grow.

I get great growth at 77F and 70 RH

 

[Coloradokid19]

Yea, as a result of the high altitude, indoor temps are much lower than at sea level.

I was mid 60F's and plants grew miserably slow under a 180W LED.

Switching out to the 150 CMH, infrared and ultraviolet heat gave the plants the kick in the roots to grow.

I get great growth at 77F and 70 RH

Oh well my veg tent stays at 75-77 during lights on and mid 60s lights off. But mine are under a 600w panel so that could be generating more heat than your 180w panel was


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[VladimirPutin]

Oh well my veg tent stays at 75-77 during lights on and mid 60s lights off. But mine are under a 600w panel so that could be generating more heat than your 180w panel was


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I never said LEDs wouldn't work in tents at altitude

Anyway, if somebody is going to blow out $1000 on a couple of plants in a grow then a tent and good LED would be fine.

But I bought my Sylvania 400W super hps and ballast for a mere $35 new at cost so uh yea whatever floats the consumer's boat

 

[Coloradokid19]

I never said LEDs wouldn't work in tents at altitude

Anyway, if somebody is going to blow out $1000 on a couple of plants in a grow then a tent and good LED would be fine.

But I bought my Sylvania 400W super hps and ballast for a mere $35 new at cost so uh yea whatever floats the consumer's boat

Yes, I've been contemplating switching and I think once my LED's go, I'm going to go to HID forsure


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[VladimirPutin]

HID never fails if your room humidity and temps are in place. There's too much proven history to turn one's back on HID yet.

 

[Coloradokid19]

HID never fails if your room humidity and temps are in place. There's too much proven history to turn one's back on HID yet.

Do you have any preferred brands, I'm having a hard time trying to find a good HID brand I feel like...


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[albienieves]

Nah bro. You're not crazy. The number's don't add up cause well, they just don't! Leds are just fucking expensive and are decades away from ever competing with hps. Period!

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[TheEEngineer]

I am not quite sure how you figure that they cant compete with an hps. Cost comparison, yes hps is cheaper however an hps is great at making heat, not light.
HPS has never been very efficient, sure a DE setup will be more efficient than a standard mogul setup but leds can run in the 60% efficiency mark quite easily leading to an overall more efficient use of your power draw (watts at the wall).
LEDs are still very much an emerging industry, new semiconductors are being used almost every day and there is a lot of new technology behind the process. In the next 5-10 years I expect to see large jumps in LED technology, while the mogul base is a fully developed technology that will not lead much further.

 

[albienieves]

How do you figure Hid's haven't progressed? Especially in the past 3 year's. Look at what Phillips has done with the Cmh light. Actually they're the only one's who could do it right. Now Hortilux has a CHPS hitting the stores, plus they also have t5 spectrum specific lights for either phase of the plant. Either way, that's neither here or there cause they're always gonna have something new coming out. You wanna save money? You might save a few hundred bucks if you go the way of a Natural gas genny. They're pretty cheap and if you know what your doing, they'll do the trick. Just remember to invert your juice before hitting them ballast with that kind of power.

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[TheEEngineer]

I never mentioned t5, cmh or hid in general. What do you even mean about the generator? Generators put out standard ac voltages, I do happened to know a good deal about electricity in an engineering and practical perspective seeing how I am an electrical engineer.

How do you figure Hid's haven't progressed? Especially in the past 3 year's. Look at what Phillips has done with the Cmh light. Actually they're the only one's who could do it right. Now Hortilux has a CHPS hitting the stores, plus they also have t5 spectrum specific lights for either phase of the plant. Either way, that's neither here or there cause they're always gonna have something new coming out. You wanna save money? You might save a few hundred bucks if you go the way of a Natural gas genny. They're pretty cheap and if you know what your doing, they'll do the trick. Just remember to invert your juice before hitting them ballast with that kind of power.

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[Graytail]

Biggrowhouse, you say 3300 Kwh/mo and $1100 in electric cost ...

You're not paying 30 cents/Kwh are you? Does that include HVAC?

'Cause if your paying that much you should easily be able to justify the very high efficiency COBs. I'm paying 7 cents.

You've looked into the 50-100 watt large Crees? - the 3590s and their competitors, Citizen and Bridgelux Vero, etc? On your scale, you could probably build them for $1 a watt, and you'd definitely get a 25% reduction in power draw ...

The grow would also improve from the wide placing of the COBs ...

It's worth keeping a close eye on. Citizen has just introduced a new series that is going to cause Cree to drop their prices, and all the companies are on the verge of next-generation designs, cheaper and more efficient.

 

[VladimirPutin]

Biggrowhouse, you say 3300 Kwh/mo and $1100 in electric cost ...

You're not paying 30 cents/Kwh are you? Does that include HVAC?

'Cause if your paying that much you should easily be able to justify the very high efficiency COBs. I'm paying 7 cents.

You've looked into the 50-100 watt large Crees? - the 3590s and their competitors, Citizen and Bridgelux Vero, etc? On your scale, you could probably build them for $1 a watt, and you'd definitely get a 25% reduction in power draw ...

The grow would also improve from the wide placing of the COBs ...

It's worth keeping a close eye on. Citizen has just introduced a new series that is going to cause Cree to drop their prices, and all the companies are on the verge of next-generation designs, cheaper and more efficient.

I pay 0.13 per KWH and I just ordered last week quad cree cobs 88W max each with glass optics.

Come to my journal in about 5 weeks to see what happens

LED is more efficient in that it gives the plant specific light that plants want, none of that useless yellow and green like HPS and CMH are famous for wasting a lot of energy to make.

 

[Icemud]

Icemud, we tried racking, however the issue still remains that its 2x the number of lights and therefore double the cost on top of the double cost difference. That puts things at WAY too expensive.

We have spoken seriously to 3 light manufacturers about building a 'ceiling of white' to use with a sea of green approach and still the cost is too high for less yield. The box is in an uninsulated barn in a hayfield in Maine and the power use for the entire operation is 3,315 KwH per month. It's very very efficient in hot and humid and bone chilling cold which kills the LED efficiency argument too when we factor in cost and yield.

The other variable, per State Statute, is number of plants. In Maine it's 6 plants per patient so it's all about yield per plant. Each Grow House serves 3 patients with the sativas grown so at $60k for the box, ~$1100/month for power, we more than broke even the first year.

I think it's clear that LED's need to bring the cost down tow work, at least in this application.

I am loving the discussion! Crowd sourcing data is pretty damn effective...

What lights did you use with your racking? do you have any photos of the rack system in place?

 

[TorturedSoul]

This is the setup

I have heard/read that 600-watt HPS are, watt-for-watt, more efficient than 1kW ones. You'd be looking at some expenditures for equipment even if you used the same reflectors you are using now (and purchased additional ones, of course), and you'd be purchasing additional electricity to cover the extra 200 watts of electricity... But with the numbers you've mentioned, I don't suppose either of those would be considered to be show-stoppers, lol, so... If you switched from seven 1kW lights to twelve 600-watt ones (for a total of 7,200 watts' worth of illumination), would your yields increase over and above the what the gross 200/7,000 fractional increase would imply?

And, in regards to yields... I suppose that it'd be a colossal PitA to modify your setup so that those lights were height-adjustable (and to adjust them), but would that thing provide a measurable increase in yield? I suppose you'd have some additional labor involved but, again, considering your numbers I would think it wouldn't be significant. IDK if you've reached the saturation point of 1,500 µmol(?) - or, possibly 1,700 since you're growing sativas - or not, but since no wall/surface/etc. is 100% reflective, your setup is still affected by the inverse square law, isn't it? (I am just guessing here, that's a larger room than I've ever grown cannabis in, lol.)

Biggrowhouse, you say 3300 Kwh/mo and $1100 in electric cost ...

You're not paying 30 cents/Kwh are you? Does that include HVAC?

'Cause if your paying that much you should easily be able to justify the very high efficiency COBs. I'm paying 7 cents.

Around here commercial/industrial clients pay significantly less per kWh than residential customers do. And that grow - and the amount of electrical consumption - definitely qualifies as a commercial concern.

I just ordered last week quad cree cobs

3590s? 3690s? Or...?

LED is more efficient in that it gives the plant specific light that plants want, none of that useless yellow and green like HPS and CMH are famous for wasting a lot of energy to make.

Cannabis actually appears to use some green light. I don't think it reflects nearly as much as actually hits it. (I could be wrong here.) I am pretty sure that you're correct about the yellow wavelengths though, that it uses very little (if any, IDK).

 

[Billyjack]

Just curious about the "why" or I guess the "what" when it comes to the yield difference. Is it because LED are missing a specific color range or UVA/UVB?

 

[Croatsan]

Actually, LED's have a wider color range compared to HID's. But the light quality is much less important for the plants than light quantity. True, the quality (spectral distribution of the colors) of light is important for some aspects of plant metabolism, but it has a small, nearly negligible effect on photosynthesis, and that is the most important thing for plants.

Also, LED's light penetration is not something to write home about.

As for the argument that LED's are more cost-effective than HID's, a study has been published where this issue has been analyzed in-depth. Here's the conclusion:

Quote: "The initial capital cost per photon delivered from LED fixtures is five to ten times higher than HPS fixtures. The high capital cost means that the five-year cost of LED fixtures is more than double that of HPS fixtures".

Here's the link to the whole study: Industry News – LED vs HID analysis | Forever Green Indoors

The advertising of LED and competitiveness amongst LED manufacturers has become so fierce that, by its own admition, even this site had to take aggresive measures against it. It's a cutthroat bussiness. And, as with everything else people are trying to sell, there's a lot of marketing hype involved.

 

[TheEEngineer]

The problem with that study is that it is over 2 years old, which in technology is nearly two life cycles. Not to mention it seems to only address singular diodes which that would not surprise me that they came to such results.

The key to this, two years in the semiconductor world is not insignificant at all.

 

[Croatsan]

While I agree it's two years old, advances have been made not only in LED technology but also in HID. From what you're saying, one might get the impression that LED tehnology is going forward by leaps and bounds, and that HID's are stagnating, and this is just not the case. Good example is CMH (Ceramic Metal Halide).

But even if that is the case, is it possible, in two years time, that LED's have managed to bridge the gap? Or, shall I say, the abyss. I mean, in the long term, they have been twice as much expensive to run than HID's.

Twice as much is, also, not insignificant at all.

I absolutely agree that one day LED's will get as good as HID's, but that day isn't here yet.

I'm looking forward to a more recent study of such scope and depth.

 

[415friendly]

LED vs. HPS cost differential

Also, LED's light penetration is not something to write home about. .

I've never understood this statement; I keep hearing it as though people believe that the light produced from one type of bulb is completely different from a second type of bulb, but once light of a particular wavelength is produced, it should all be about the light intensity. I understand that wavelength makes a difference in terms of penetrating through a medium, but red light from HID should be no different than if it came from LED or CFL.

With the Red/Blue LED grow lights, I can see that they won't have the same lux output as a regular light, since the selling point is higher percentage of usable light wavelengths. However, with the increasing number of COB Warm white/Natural White LED's starting to show up, I would think that should be where comparisons are made with HID.

A COB LED producing 30000 lux should be equal in penetrating power to a HID producing 30000lux. I would be very curious to see a comparison of different light sources to find their lux output at specific distances (24 inches for example) and the wattage needed to obtain them.

I realize that the light produced will differ in amounts of different wavelengths, but at that point, we're talking about which produces the better spectrum of lights as opposed to wattage, which is what everyone seems to compare.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Ironically, that might work against the argument to switch to LEDs. One reason that has been put forth for switching from HID lighting to LED is that the lifetime of the LED product is (in theory*) such that the user will not have to replace any components, while the user of HID will go through several bulbs (which add to the cost of HID over time). HID technology is, while not completely stagnant, fully mature and therefore advances tend to be slow in coming and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But, with LED lighting, being a much younger technology (the first practical visible LED was invented in 1962, whereas HIDs have been around in one form or another for over 100 years), it means that advances can tend to come much faster - and be more likely to be revolutionary in nature.

(*) I have seen a lot of reports of component failures in some LED product lines. While this is "only" inconvenient when the product is still under warranty - the grower may lose that light source during the time it takes to ship the product to the manufacturer and/or repair center, have it repaired, and for it to be shipped back, and may have to pay the shipping cost for at least one of those two shippings - it is still a PitA, and something to think about. In addition to this, it has been said (and quite often) that an LED product may last up to 50,000 hours - which would be almost 11½ years of continuous operation if used strictly for 12-hour/day flowering - the warranties I have seen are only typically three to five years in duration (and some... "economy" brands warranty their products for only two to three years and sometimes even less).

What all of that means is that... If one assumes that the average purchaser of LED lighting is someone who wants new technology, who is looking for some kind of "edge" - be it efficiency, performance, whatever - then they might be that much more likely to upgrade their equipment when the next generation (or at least the one after that) hits the market.

Sure, the grower has the option to sell his/her "old" LED product(s) to someone else, and this does happen. But this can be an uncertain thing... Not everyone wishes to purchase LED products. Then, too, not everyone wishes to purchase used lighting and/or growing equipment (for various reasons). And, with the situation that I mentioned in my aside ("(*)"), I would think that those who are willing to purchase used LED grow light products would not, on average, be willing to pay all that much for it, lol, since many companies may refuse to warranty equipment which was purchased used from third parties. Why purchase a used, likely expensive, out-of-warranty LED product when one can probably purchase a tried and true HPS setup NEW for the same or less money? Although some electronic HID ballasts are said to be somewhat fragile, C&C magnetic ballasts are the kinds of products that a person had best really want to see for a long time, lofl, because they hardly ever fail; I dropped one down a flight of stairs onto a concrete floor once - and then proceeded to use it for years :rolleyes3 .

With all that being said, I am still a fan of LED grow light technology. There's one "in my possession" that is all set to be fired up just as soon as this heat wave breaks enough that I'll have some hope of keeping the grow area at 86°F or less (which seems to be the top of the optimum temperature range for grows that do not use supplemental CO₂, providing that there is enough light to max out the cannabis plants' ability under those conditions). It is "early 2015" technology, and the specific product has been replaced by a newer, more powerful one. Nonetheless, it seems to be a much better product than the average LED grow light panel (for the wattage - ~350 watts, actual) than the average LED product being sold today, both in quality, warranty (five years, with three years of technical support), efficiency... and results. That product is the SE350+UVB which is one of our sponsors' (Amare Technologies). Here are a couple of charts (one with and one without the included 90° lenses in place):

In my case, it will be used in a 3'x3' area. If you are considering the purchase of an LED product, I suggest you obtain this kind of data for the product(s) you are thinking about buying. There have been tests like this performed on various HID (HPS, primarily) setups before that you might find if you spend enough time searching the web, so you ought to be able to compare the PPFD between what you are using now and the one(s) you are considering. (Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD): A measurement of the light (photons) that reach the target each second. PPFD is measured over a one meter square area in “micromoles per square meter per second” and expressed as μmol/m2/s.)

Oh, and it probably wouldn't hurt if you can find evidence of how the LED product(s) you are considering have performed for others in an actual cannabis grow. In my case, I was able to find such evidence in posts #112 and #113 of this thread (again, this is a previous generation of the product; I would assume the current version (SE450+UVB) - with 100 more watts, and newer technology including more efficient/powerful COBs, and emitting an estimated 70% more photons, to perform that much better). I think I have linked directly to post #112. Notice the young lady included in one of the pictures for scale, lol (the plant is taller than she is and several times greater in diameter):
Amare Technologies: Questions, Answers & Results

I cannot say one way or the other whether this product will "blow away" HID on a watt-for-watt basis. Much, like everything else, depends on the grower - and the style of the grow. The penetration/footprint/etc. characteristics for one's light source needs to match the size/shape/number/spacing/etc. of the plant(s) for best results. Something that I knew before, in general - the first time I ever grew using a style that would later be called "scrog" was way back when I was using groups of 4' fluorescent tubes to grow with. I remember thinking, "I have managed to cram a good bit of light into this space, but there still isn't much in the way of penetration. What I need is a way to grow on more of a "flat pane" instead of trying to grow trees." I have recently seem some of Icemud's posts, and they have reminded me how important it is to tailor one's growing style (and everything else) to one's lighting (and... everything else). I haven't grown in several years, don't have a budget, and - in all likelihood - will not be growing in such a way as to take full advantage of the LED panel. I know this will be a learning experience for me. I will not be growing "high production" strains, either, lol. If I harvest even as much as, IDK, .55 grams per watt then I will have to consider the grow a success (insofar as the LED's place in it is concerned) and if I get anywhere near .75 g/w I will be astounded - and those are numbers that I would have shaken my head at in the past, when using lighting technology that I had used for a number of grows and had a chance to explore, learn, and tailor my methods for to one degree or another.

They're all (where we are chiefly concerned) sources of illumination for indoor gardens. Airplanes and helicopters both take off, move through the air, and land again - but if I'm ever in a helicopter and the pilot climbs in and says, "I fly airplanes all the time, but I have never flown a helicopter," I'll be out of there so fast that my shadow will still be there wondering WtF happened.

While I agree it's two years old, advances have been made not only in LED technology but also in HID. From what you're saying, one might get the impression that LED tehnology is going forward by leaps and bounds, and that HID's are stagnating, and this is just not the case. Good example is CMH (Ceramic Metal Halide).

...first sold commercially in 1994, lol.

In "recent" years, advances in HID technology have been evolutionary - not revolutionary. It is a fully mature technology and advances just do not tend to come at a rapid pace. Also, the general market in regards to HID is mature - whereas the LED market is still growing by leaps and bounds (fueling R&D), expected to grow from a few billion dollars to ten times that in the next decade or so.

But even if that is the case, is it possible, in two years time, that LED's have managed to bridge the gap? Or, shall I say, the abyss. I mean, in the long term, they have been twice as much expensive to run than HID's.

Do you remember when metal halides started to become mainstream for growers? And, later, high pressure sodium lights? It was much the same... 35+ years ago, there weren't all that many people utilizing HID in the grow room. I think the biggest difference between then and now is... the Internet :rolleyes3 . Back then, I could tell a few friends, who'd tell a few friends, who'd tell... me, lol - because the "circle" of acquaintances was smaller and news spread more slowly. Now, I could undoubtedly find a venue to post a picture of my most recent bowel movement - and 25,000 people would have seen and commented upon it by lunch time. Such things have, perhaps unfortunately, enabled (caused, lol?) people to find out about LED grow products at a rapid pace - a pace which has outrun the technology in a lot of ways, IMHO. That, combined with the abundance of entities pushing out products of uncertain or, at best, somewhat less than premium quality (something else that has changed a bit in the past three or four decades), means that a LOT of LED grow panels have been sold that probably should not have gone to market to begin with.

I absolutely agree that one day LED's will get as good as HID's, but that day isn't here yet.

On this particular day, some people are still using fluorescent technology . So there really are no clear-cut lines as far as different types of technology and periods of time go. But I think, on average, LED (grow-)light technology has advanced quicker than and has had less dead-ends than HID (grow-)light technology. Remember mercury-vapor lamps, LMAO?