LED grams per watt

[LEDBud]

I like the trend I see in your statistics , Nice to see the positive direction in the results.

the last LED grow harvest was using about 50% less wattage with a 25% higher gr to watt ratio.



Good Job Icemud.

 

[theengineer]

my gpw went from circa 56 with HPS to circa 85 with LED - there is no question that LED can now exceed HID in this metric imo

 

[LEDBud]

my gpw went from circa 56 with HPS to circa 85 with LED - there is no question that LED can now exceed HID in this metric imo

nice , that's a 50% increase in the gr per watt , I hope to realize a 50% improvement in gpw's with my first led harvest. ( time will tell ) I will be using about 500w from two 432w panels for flowering.

 

[theengineer]

nice; two Spider Cobs?

 

[LEDBud]

No , Some plain 144 x3w panels , black in color , oddly made or marketed by UFO.
I won them on a auction 2 for $170 ( what a deal) I had bought a MarsHydro 300w old style panel a few weeks earlier , its on the seedlings now , it will be used for the "grow" light , the two larger LED's will be put to service in the 2x4x6 plywood cabinet for flowering while the first grow led starts a new batch.

Two months between harvest's , my afghan #1 are 7-8 week plants (likely 8)

The 2 lights are in route

 

[LUXgro]

This is great! I wish more people would provide this kind of information.
Thank you Icemud.

 

[OttawaGreen]

My best so far with LED is 1gpw. With hps I never got more than .5 gpw personally. 1gpw is not that common and requires a good setup not just a silly overpriced special model of light.

 

[addonexus]

I enjoy LED's.

 

[Happy Hemper]

The most important metric at this point, with LED users getting good outcomes, is the reduced power consumption which naturally corresponds to a reduced carbon foot print. With this taken into consideration I find it irresponsible to continue the use of MH/HPS setups unless there is some byproduct that I am aware of.

 

[MRXC]

I hear a lot of complaining from people about the led pannel

When i started growing i did this in my back yard and i have grown some nice plants outdoor
So when i bought my first grow light i ended up with a nice led from Mars Hydro
I buildid a cab put the lights in there with small exhaust and a small fan inside for airflow
Got some kush seeds in there. 6 x 12 liter and a total of 360 watts off light. I ended up with 0.74 g a watt.
The second grow i did add a cfl but still ended up with 0.87 g a watt.

But im willing to pay for my stuff so no corners are getting cut ��

So above a half a gram a watt is doable but dont be a dick �� and have lots of love for your chicks ��

 

[Fevs]

Imo this is how it rolls.. And I ain't the best grower either. I'm just an average grower with common sense.

Everybody talks of 1 gram per watt like it's a trip to the shops! I hardly ever get one gram per watt, though I have twice with leds from over 50 attempts. Imo that was down to outside temps being perfect, good humidity outside too which made the grows turn out great.

The rest of the time...

I constantly get between 0.5 grams per watt and 0.8 grams per watt. I'm happy with that. I have never got 1 gram per watt from hid lights anyway. I have used over 20 different led panels and have started growing with leds from go.

Recently I had 4-5 months of growing under hid lights. Grew some nice plants, which is nothing new to me. The quality of the buds was terrible compared to led, which is 'minimum' twice as frosty under led. Also hid buds were nowhere near as dense. Plus the stems are fatter under hid lights which accounts for lots of weight when being weighed, as very few dry their bud properly before working out their gpw stats.

I like to compare it this way, which was from my last grow. 600w hps cooltube... So, that's 650w actual draw from the ballast, so nobody should even be comparing the numbers 600w, as every 600w ballast draws at least 650w.

So that's 650w for a 600w lamp in a cool tube in my case last grow. The glass makes you lose 10% of the light, so now we are talking 650w draw for 540w of light. + 28w for the fan running my cooltube. So 650w + 28W is now 678w for 540w of light. Yes you can have it closer to the canopy if you want to lose overall coverage.

I now use 'what I consider a ball park comparison figure of led'

Budmaster 675 od which draws 380w on full power + 300 od that draws 180w on full power. So 560w actual draw. That's with a '28w' 5'' fan for extraction. So that set up is 588w actual draw from the wall.

I can also dim my set up without changing the spectrum, unlike hps. I can run both leds on half power on 280w which has the same par on half power as a 600w hps, yet draws about the same as a 250w hps. Which is 280w actual draw. Though will add here my coverage on half power is far, far, far superior to a 250w hid light and pisses all over it!

My extraction also runs very quiet under leds, so it doesn't sound like I'm in a factory, like it did with hps growing! It's as quiet as having a fish tank plugged in.

So for me, I get a little bit more yield of lesser quality bud under hps.

For Hps growers, time to re-calculate your grows using 650w instead of 600w. Anybody with less than 650 grams of buds, using a 600w hps has failed to hit 1 gram per watt. Lets no pretend it's 600w to make your stats better!

Plus plants grown under hps need 50w per sq.ft in flowering. Led plants don't, my 380w led covers way more area than a 400w hps by 25% with better results, so that means to me that leds need around 37.5w per sq.ft 'maximum', as the plants can use the light the leds give off unlike hid. What is it again, little rusty, 13% useable light isn't it from hps?

Plus my house insn't going to burn down if my extraction fails. That appeals to me quite a bit actually! The safety aspect, before greed kicks in, safety was no.1 for most of us when we set out!

This plant has been vegged on half power, so the exact draw of a 250w ballast... Say no more! I have vegged under a 250 hps + a 250 mh and it just doesn't do this!

 

[Dave Groomer]

After writing my post "LED lumens, again", I realized
that "how much", regarding "I get so much yeild" was,
itself, a useful statistic.

Under HPS, people used to talk about the achievable
goal of 1 gram (dried) per watt per grow season. I
never got much more than about a half gram per watt.

But now, with these claims of 1/3 the power of HPS
for their LED lights, someone should be achieving
3 grams per watt per season.

Let's hear your numbers, guys. This should be beyond
hype, and relates to money.

Anyone?

My last harvest was a little over 15oz from 4 plants under a Mars-Hydro 900. About 450w in a 3x3' tent.

 

[Fevs]

That is an excellent result in that area. Nice size tent for led growing. Enough space to make the perfect environment, which seems you did. 15 oz is an awesome result!

 

[Dave Groomer]

That is an excellent result in that area. Nice size tent for led growing. Enough space to make the perfect environment, which seems you did. 15 oz is an awesome result!

Thanks. I was very happy with that!!!!!

 

[Fevs]

Growing is very easy going going and stress free under led. Check out this little autoflower grow. Led + cfl. Canopy temps are 75. I know it's not only led growing as I have added cfl, but look how simple this is, even with cfl. Don't need to adjust anything, just leave the led at the top and the cfl where it is. Easy street! No heat issues at all. 2 little clip on 13w fans. These plants will thrive in here. I have set this up to keep my grow room warm in the dark period and it's doing a superb job!

Also my little 90w led mother tent / veg tent

I actually bought 3 of my 4 Budmaster leds used, so only paid around 50% of retail price. I'm getting some good use out of my electricity, over my led 3 set ups.

 

[JimmyIndy]

Best Gram per watt Ive ever gotten from LED was 1.6 from 120watt Vero29 3000K fixture with a heavy WhiteAlien , but most range from .75 to 1.5 depending on strain I am running and the fixture that's over it, Ive tested 16 different fixtures last 2years(Mono and COB)Ive found that CXB3590 and Vero29 run between 90 to 120 watts thru quality optics spaced evenly is best approach. 3000K flower/4000K full cycle/5000K Veg.

 

[Terp]

Best Gram per watt Ive ever gotten from LED was 1.6 from 120watt Vero29 3000K fixture with a heavy WhiteAlien , but most range from .75 to 1.5 depending on strain I am running and the fixture that's over it, Ive tested 16 different fixtures last 2years(Mono and COB)Ive found that CXB3590 and Vero29 run between 90 to 120 watts thru quality optics spaced evenly is best approach. 3000K flower/4000K full cycle/5000K Veg.

This guy knows whats up. He has the right LED chips and the right idea about spacing.

Answers to this thread will be all over the place because not all LED lights are created equal. Not even close. Not to mention the skill level of the grower and other environmental factors.

It all comes down to is PPFD. Its like PAR for your entire canopy. Its a much much more important number to know than a PAR reading in the center of your light. It is directly related to the grams you will be pulling. You want at least 1000 PPFD. Cannabis can only use up to 1500 PPFD but gains start to taper off at around 1000.

Here is a chart from a government study on cannabis that lays out the relation to PPFD and photosynthesis (including temps).

So the best thing you can do is find out what your PPFD for the LED light you have in mind is and compare it to the chart to see if your reaching your strains potential.

Be careful thou. Most poor LED manufactures will not tell you what the PPFD of their lights are and will try to confuse the non-knowing with other numbers.

 

[JimmyIndy]

DNAgenetics White Aliens grown with Vero18s 3500K and Vero29s 3000K. Vero18s were running around 1gpw and V29s 1.25gpw on average

 

[OlderGrower]

After writing my post "LED lumens, again", I realized
that "how much", regarding "I get so much yeild" was,
itself, a useful statistic.

Under HPS, people used to talk about the achievable
goal of 1 gram (dried) per watt per grow season. I
never got much more than about a half gram per watt.

But now, with these claims of 1/3 the power of HPS
for their LED lights, someone should be achieving
3 grams per watt per season.

Let's hear your numbers, guys. This should be beyond
hype, and relates to money.

Anyone?

I spent 3 months researching LED's before I bought my 2nd one, since my 1st one was given to me by my neighbor. During that 3 month time of researching I did not 1 time come across an LED manufacture who claimed 1/3 of the power. I did see a few claims that they could produce the same results of a 1,000 watt HPS with 650 watts of LED. But 65% is a far cry from 33%. If your only concerned with the almighty dollar, you may want to rethink your position on LEDs my friend. Sure HIDs have been the power house of the indoor grows for many years but guess what, electricity is not going to be getting cheaper. HID's are like the ole muscle cars of the good ole days, great to have one in the garage and take out for a spin every now and then but christ who can afford to drive one every day?

I live in one of the cheapest places in America for electricity, and I am pretty sure they have no intentions of lowering the cost, raising maybe but lowering.. Not gonna happen.

 

[OttawaGreen]

Also keep in mind when the expensive led hype train gets going that one fancy pants $1000+ light might be better than a value priced Mars hydro, but it is not so much better as to justify the price. If it is 10% better at twice the price then that is not good (to me).
Or put it another way, whatever fancy light you get for $1000 or whatever - consider how much more yield you would get if you spent the same amount as the fancy light on several Mars hydro lights...