Anomoly23
New Member
Ok so here is a topic I have not seen touched but I think a lot of people are scratching their head about when considering LED's as a source for growing. We all know that when considering a grow we have to take in to account the size of the space and how to efficiently light that space. Traditionally when doing this using HID's Or T5's, Lumens per square feet are important, too little light and your yield will be low and the plants will not get the proper amount of light. To do this the equation is simple, you multiply the length of the area times the width which will give you the Square footage of your grow area. Then you add the estimated lumen of all your lighting and divide that by the square feet giving you the lumens you have per square foot. Good gardens have anywhere from 2500 lumens to 5000 per square foot and it can go up as long as your plants are not burning.
Example- I have a 5x5 grow room which would make 25 Square feet I need to light. I have a 600 watt HPS rated at 90,000 lumens. 90,000/25=3,600 Lumens per square foot, which is more than sufficient. While this is a good base figure when we try to apply this to LED lights it just doesn't work because LED's are a different Beast and have to be approached in different ways, we can not apply the same old methods to a space age technology.
Here is why you cannot expect Lumens or Lux to give you a proper idea of how an LED light will grow. Newer LED lights and the higher end manufacturers have realized in the past years that any old LED will not give plants the proper light spectrum they need, in fact many older LED companies used lights directly made for traffic lights and slapped them in LED panels and called them grow lights. They realized the strength of LEDS is NOT in the Lumens or Lux it can put out but the ability to only light the spectrum's the plant can use and none of the ones that it cannot.When you see a traditional Lumens spec this is telling the max output of spectrum's that the human eye can perceive there are thousands of unusable lumens when using traditional HID or T5 set ups. This is the base point of why LED's use so much less lumens, because they simply are not needed. I guess I would relate it to advertising a car with 400 Horsepower but you will only ever get to use 200 of that horsepower. why even have it? This urgency to get a new product on the market I think has actually hurt LED's reputation, as now they are realizing the error of their ways and many companies are backtracking. Now to get more scientific good LED lights are engineered to emit with in the PAR spectrum.It may come as a surprise to learn that plants don't actually "see" the same light we do. The photosynthesis reaction that makes plants grow reacts to only certain light wavelengths (colors). This is exactly what PAR light is (Photosynthetically Active Radiation). This means that if you buy a traditional HID light, you will be giving your plants lots of extra light that it can't even use. This is why you see LED's with much less wattage than traditional HID's it is simply more efficient in every way.
So why LEDs? LEDs emit only certain wavelengths of light and have a long lifespan (around 50,000 hours), making them the perfect solution to efficient plant growth. The reason why LED growing is not commonplace is because it has been difficult to find LED lights powerful enough to to sustain good growth. Technology has rapidly advanced in this field, and is not the case anymore.
Conclusion:
Why don't LED companies list the LUX or Lumens on lights? They could, but it would be a meaningless measurement.
Lumens are a measurement of how much light energy a light source emits. The problem is that this measurement is based around the wavelengths of the human eye, and NOT the PAR wavelengths. Using Lumens is great for measuring light used in flashlights or office buildings, but completely worthless when it comes to LED grow lights.
LUX is simply a measurement of how much light reaches a surface (Lumens/m^2), but again this measurement is based upon lumens which is totally irrelevant for LED purposes. Legitimate PAR measurements are as follows: PAR watts per square meter, PPF PAR, and YPF PAR. These are, unfortunately, very hard to measure correctly. Very few (if any) vendors will provide you with these numbers because they simply do not have a way of calculating them. Any vendor that tries to sell their lights based Soley on LUX or Lumens is just trying to trick you!
I hope this has been informative and help put to rest some of fairy tales about LED's. Like I said both the lighting companies and growers jumped into these years ago applying the very same techniques as they have in the past on HID set ups or products. Now that the manufacturers have made a change I think we will start to see people applying new Ideas to LED technology to get excellent results, and we have already seen that happening. Check some of the LED grows on this site to confirm. Some of this was sourced from superled.
Keep it Green
Example- I have a 5x5 grow room which would make 25 Square feet I need to light. I have a 600 watt HPS rated at 90,000 lumens. 90,000/25=3,600 Lumens per square foot, which is more than sufficient. While this is a good base figure when we try to apply this to LED lights it just doesn't work because LED's are a different Beast and have to be approached in different ways, we can not apply the same old methods to a space age technology.
Here is why you cannot expect Lumens or Lux to give you a proper idea of how an LED light will grow. Newer LED lights and the higher end manufacturers have realized in the past years that any old LED will not give plants the proper light spectrum they need, in fact many older LED companies used lights directly made for traffic lights and slapped them in LED panels and called them grow lights. They realized the strength of LEDS is NOT in the Lumens or Lux it can put out but the ability to only light the spectrum's the plant can use and none of the ones that it cannot.When you see a traditional Lumens spec this is telling the max output of spectrum's that the human eye can perceive there are thousands of unusable lumens when using traditional HID or T5 set ups. This is the base point of why LED's use so much less lumens, because they simply are not needed. I guess I would relate it to advertising a car with 400 Horsepower but you will only ever get to use 200 of that horsepower. why even have it? This urgency to get a new product on the market I think has actually hurt LED's reputation, as now they are realizing the error of their ways and many companies are backtracking. Now to get more scientific good LED lights are engineered to emit with in the PAR spectrum.It may come as a surprise to learn that plants don't actually "see" the same light we do. The photosynthesis reaction that makes plants grow reacts to only certain light wavelengths (colors). This is exactly what PAR light is (Photosynthetically Active Radiation). This means that if you buy a traditional HID light, you will be giving your plants lots of extra light that it can't even use. This is why you see LED's with much less wattage than traditional HID's it is simply more efficient in every way.
So why LEDs? LEDs emit only certain wavelengths of light and have a long lifespan (around 50,000 hours), making them the perfect solution to efficient plant growth. The reason why LED growing is not commonplace is because it has been difficult to find LED lights powerful enough to to sustain good growth. Technology has rapidly advanced in this field, and is not the case anymore.
Conclusion:
Why don't LED companies list the LUX or Lumens on lights? They could, but it would be a meaningless measurement.
Lumens are a measurement of how much light energy a light source emits. The problem is that this measurement is based around the wavelengths of the human eye, and NOT the PAR wavelengths. Using Lumens is great for measuring light used in flashlights or office buildings, but completely worthless when it comes to LED grow lights.
LUX is simply a measurement of how much light reaches a surface (Lumens/m^2), but again this measurement is based upon lumens which is totally irrelevant for LED purposes. Legitimate PAR measurements are as follows: PAR watts per square meter, PPF PAR, and YPF PAR. These are, unfortunately, very hard to measure correctly. Very few (if any) vendors will provide you with these numbers because they simply do not have a way of calculating them. Any vendor that tries to sell their lights based Soley on LUX or Lumens is just trying to trick you!
I hope this has been informative and help put to rest some of fairy tales about LED's. Like I said both the lighting companies and growers jumped into these years ago applying the very same techniques as they have in the past on HID set ups or products. Now that the manufacturers have made a change I think we will start to see people applying new Ideas to LED technology to get excellent results, and we have already seen that happening. Check some of the LED grows on this site to confirm. Some of this was sourced from superled.
Keep it Green
I cant wait to get my current grow up in a journal. I have 3 past grows, But I never really documented them.
I used HID lamps for all three, with one 600 watt HPS/MH set up. Now I am working on an experimental LED/Plasma induction lamp grow. I have received all but one light and I hope to have some pics up and the first entry this weekend or by the begging of next week.
I am going to be using a 
I can't wait to get some tips/tricks and hopefully be able to contribute something too. 
