Am I out to lunch?

[Grownincanada]

Hi all. I am not new to growing having managed a couple of hydro stores in the 80's but a little rusty having kids and life made me quit for over 20 years.
In my opinion the biggest change in the industry has been the recent improvement in lighting and I have found myself in an interesting position. I work for an importer of commercial LED lights. Because of this I have access to literally hundreds of different kinds of LED lights. Everything from small, 10 watt, incandescent replacement Bulbs to high bays pushing 500 watts. A true, measurable 500 watts not 500 that is actually 250 which seems to be a trick some of the so called "grow light" companies trolling the web are trying to pull.
I have done a lot of research looking for an LED grow light that would provide the average consumer, me, with enough smoke for personal use and, to be honest, I am sick of the BS. Most of the good lights are crazy expensive and the cheap ones are questionable at best. I was getting frustrated so I bought an Apogee quantum sensor to measures photosynthetically active radiation in µmol m-2 s-1.
I am now sifting through our inventory looking for a full spectrum, high intensity light that will provide a minimum of 800 µmol m-2 s-1. over a 2'x4' area. My ultimate goal is to try to produce 400 grams using SOG and some form of organic super soil. Am I out to lunch? Any thoughts ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.

Mike

 

[Graytail]

The most efficient lighting right now seems to be the large white COBs by Cree and Vero, and the Gavita double-ended hps bulbs, along with 315 watt Ceramic Metal Halide.

For the range of PPFD you want, you should end up around 400-500 watts. I believe the Crees are used in commercial lighting, so you may have access to them through that channel, otherwise, they're best done DIY - pretty simple stuff - COB, driver, heatsink/fan.

Two 315s would kick butt if you can vent the heat. Eight COBs at 50 watts each would do the same.




[Edit] As far as yield ... as you increase power, yield doesn't keep up - the best yield/watt comes from a sweet spot somewhere closer to 500 umols.

 

[Grownincanada]

Thanks Graytail I appreciate the input. Some of my suppliers do use Cree LED's but are moving away from them. I have posted a couple of pictures of NYC Diesel under a 6000K 200 watt light. The plant is very compact and looks good to me? Flowering may be a whole other story. I will add another 5000k 200 watt light and see what happens. The lights do have a fairly high CRI 80+ which I believe means a broader spectrum? you can see the PAR level at 12" is fairly high at 700 + umols. The second light will just broaden the canopy . In my mind quality is more important than quantity so will not having a massive red spectrum affect the quality? I am not a commercial grower and never will be, this is purely for my personal enjoyment so a little inefficiency in power vs spectrum is not a big deal.

 

[Graytail]

Your plants look great!

But yes, you do need to go to 3000K for bloom - they just won't bloom properly without the red end of the spectrum. And from my reading, everyone seems to prefer the CRI 80 over the 90 anyway. Part of it is efficiency which is what these enthusiasts are chasing, and the red peak is better for plants - CRI is for humans, no?

I'm running 1000 watts of blurple LED panels in a 4x4 and I'm really not getting more yield than I did with a 600W hps. But I'm chasing quality too, and my latest harvests have been far superior to the hps ones. Colas are much more full and dense and the individual buds are hard. And trich production is significantly higher, which is what I'm after.

I have an old 400W magnetic hps ballast and a discontinued Ceramic Metal Halide bulb that I'm itching to run in place of a 335W LED panel I have in the center. It's almost white with a very plant oriented spectrum. Otherwise the next step will be some CXB3590s to see how they perform.

 

[Rifleman]

Welcome to and good luck on your light search.

 

[VladimirPutin]

The never ending topic of which is the real holy grail of grow lamps will never end!

This thread has been very scientific so far

Good luck with that quantum sensor !

 

[hydro1000]

When the perfect light does comes out, it won't make much of a difference to most of us. We as humans can't resist the temptation to fiddle with things. Anything that hangs, swings or has little buttons, you can beat your last dollar that we're going to mess with it. None of us will have the same height and setting for the same applications, some will have it bang on for every grow and use the light to its full potential and the rest of us fiddling with it. But I want one just to fiddle with

Great Topic