Welcome to this comprehensive guide to growing with LED lights. Hopefully you'll be able to find everything you need here as far as lighting goes. I designed this blog to cover most of the LED grow light issues, but if there's something else you'd like to see please let me know. I don't offer specific light reviews, so I suggest you go here to learn more about the latest LED grow lights (www.ledgrowlightsreview.org).
Table of Contents:
LED grow lights and their advantages and disadvantages are heavily debated. Companies selling traditional HID lights will say these LED lights are the worst thing ever while companies selling LEDs claim that they will completely replace HIDs in the next few years. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of these lights.
Disadvantages of LED Grow Lights
1. Initial Cost – Plan to spend more upfront for an LED lamp than for a HID lamp. However, remember that you will save money on your power bills with an LED. Fortunately, as the LED technology continues to develop, the upfront costs are going down quickly.
2. Unable to replace single diodes – The individual bulbs or diodes in the LED light cannot be replaced like those in the HID lamp. If one of the lights goes out, the entire unit must be replaced.
Advantages of LED Lights for Plants
1. Long Life – These lamps offer a longer life than the traditional HID lights. On the average LED grow lights last 2 ½ times the life of the HID units.
2. Less heat – Led grow lights do not create the amount of heat that HID lamps do. Both homes and plants have been burned due to HID lights that were not closely monitored. In order to create light, HID lights must produce heat. By using electricity to heat the filament to a certain point light is produced. With LED lights there is no filament and there is no need to produce the amount of heat.
3. Lower energy consumption – Since the LED light produces the light in a different manner, it requires less energy. The LED only produces the light needed for the plant and nothing else. Since plants do not use and reflect green light, the LED is set so that it does not produce this light. This also allows the lamp to be designed to encourage growth of vegetation, flowering, or fruiting. With the HID grow light, colors such as green are used but not used. This adds to the HID lamp inefficiency and wastes energy.
4. Simplicity – There is no need for a ballast to keep the lights going. LEDs just plug into an outlet with a normal power cord.
Whether you decide LED grow lights are right for you or not, you now have some information concerning the items to consider before making your final decision as to the best grow lights for your situation. In either case, you should have a great time growing plants inside your home or greenhouse.
When it comes to growing indoor plants, traditional growers have typically used HIDs, or High-Intensity Discharge lights. HIDs radiate the optimal light spectrum for their particular plants. However, while HIDs are quite effective for growing all sorts of plants like tomatoes, jalapenos, watermelons, and other fruits and veggie, they have two main disadvantages: they are bulky in size and they consume a significant amount of power. Because of this, alternatives to HID lighting have been sought out.
Foremost among these alternatives are LED Grow Lights. Studies have demonstrated their comparative effectiveness to HIDs in growing plants (some studies have even shown better growth patterns with LEDs), while being energy efficient and lightweight at the same time. And that has made LED Grow Lights the first choice of lighting in many situations, such as:
Greenhouses and Commercial Growers
In greenhouse and commercial growing, the demand for fruits and vegetables is constant all year long. And while HIDs have long delivered here, their higher power consumption limits the number of lights you can place. In contrast, an equally effective, energy efficient lighting solution (like LEDs) will allow more lights to be added, which will in turn allow more plants to be grown, and more produce to be sold at a minimal cost in electricity.
Pretty crazy that all of this stuff can be grown without the sun!
In addition, LED Grow Lights have that added benefit of being able to change their light spectrum easily (such as from red to blue), which is a big advantage when you are growing different types of plants. And all that could only translate to more profits for the greenhouse operator or commercial grower.
Aquarium and Reef Lighting
The aquarium lighting industry is another field that has begun to shift to LED Grow Lights. And the reasons are quite similar: they can grow both fresh and saltwater plants just as effectively as their Halide counterparts, but with less than half of the wattage consumption. For example, it has been reported that a 60 watt LED can replace a 400 watt Halide light with no noticeable difference. Their light weight and their ability to switch light spectrum easily also makes them more adaptable to various lighting situations, which can make an aquarium design more practical.
Medical Marijuana
In California and other states, medical cannabis is being grown by licensed individuals and organizations, for the purpose of helping people who suffer from various conditions like nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite (which might result from chemotherapy or AIDS), and even insomnia.
However, because of the relatively controversial nature of this substance, it is crucial to minimize costs in order to support the grower’s operations. And one significant way to do this is to shift to LED lighting. LED Grow Lights provide the right spectrum for the cannabis to grow, but for a much less cost.
Conclusion
With these fields, you can see that LED Grow Lights are becoming more and more commonplace. And with mass production techniques which lower the cost of LEDs even more, it is almost certain that traditional HIDs will be replaced by LEDs as the growing light of choice in the near future.
Can you imagine your doctor prescribing you marijuana?
There are certain criteria to follow when it comes to purchasing a quality LED grow light. The simple truth is that there are a lot of extremely satisfied growers that are using and recommend LED grow lights. The people that find themselves to be somewhat dissatisfied with these lights are the ones that have not taken the time to research led technology and therefore they have not chosen a great light. The following are some criteria that will make it possible for you to choose the best grow lights for your needs.
1. Spectral Wave Length - Basically, red wave lengths are long and blue ones are short. All light wave lengths can be classified into color groups and LED lights are no different. Some plants do not need all of the colors of light to grow and that is why LED grow lights are so popular. Most plants are green and reflect green light, and researchers have found that red light induces flowering and blue lights initiates more vegetation or growth.
2. Heat Sink - Most times when someone complains about the life of their LED grow lights being too short, the first thing that needs to be looked at is the heat sink. LED chips will fracture or break when overheated, therefore a high-quality heat sink needs to be put into place.
3. Warranty - For the most part, nearly everything that is sold these days comes with some kind of a warranty. Grow lights are no different and as a guide they usually come with a one year warranty. More expensive lights may be fitted with a longer warranty (Up to 3 Years). Finding a light set with a mid-range warranty is advisable.
4. Trial Period - LED grow light technology is still new and it is possible for first time users to be taken advantage of by unscrupulous salesmen. To overcome this, legitimate manufacturers offer a 30 day trial period so that you may test the lights. If you see that the lights have no effect on the plants that you are growing, you should probably send the light back.
5. Actual Watts Drawn - The sheer nature of LED lights and the technology behind it means that a single watt diode will not actually draw a single watt when used. It may actually only draw 0.6 watts when in use. Therefore, when a company lists a diode as being a 200 watt diode, the likelihood of that diode drawing 200 watts is slim. It may actually only draw 120 watts when used.
You'll need to find out how much power the light actually draws.
To summarize, LED grow lights are useful provided that you choose the right kind for the job that you want them to do. Thanks for reading.
For us garden enthusiasts who don’t live in some sort of tropical paradise, the growing season seems too short. A few months of fresh vegetables just aren’t enough. Thankfully experts have furnished a means for all of us to keep growing fresh greens all year. Indoor growing lights can provide all the light the plant will need from seedling to flowering. Pretty cool stuff.
Exactly What Indoor Lights are on the Market?
There are numerous indoor plant lighting fixtures available; however the two that work the best are usually LED (Light-Emitting Diode) devices and HID (High-Intensity Discharge) lamps. Some common examples of HID lights include Metallic-Halide and High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights. HPS lights are probably the most popular light on the market because of their ability to make plants flower.
In the last 5-10 years LED lights have really been putting the full-court press on HID lights. More and more people happen to be investing in LEDs. This “insurgence” has led to a controversy pertaining to which lights better (HIDs or LEDs?). I personally believe that both lights are fantastic (it’s hard to belittle something that can grow a plant). That being said, I think it’s worth taking the time to look at some of the arguments. That way you can make a better decision for your individual circumstance.
Plants Don’t Use all the Sun’s Light
If by chance you can recall back to your first science course, you are likely to remember that sunshine puts off a spectrum of various colors. Heck you may have even used one of those fancy prisms that shows you all the different colors of the sun’s light (featured on the right). Well, remarkably scientists have discovered that crops don't use all of the colors of sunshine during the process of photosynthesis. Some botanists have found that plants react stronger to blue lights during vegetation and red lights during photosynthesis.
So what does this have to do with HIDs and LEDs? Well, Light Emitting Diode grow lighting fixtures can be designed to produce specific wavelengths or colors. Consequently the perfect amount of every color may be dialed in using an LED light. This means that blue lights can be used for vegetation and red lights can be used for flowering. Healthier, happier plants.
This control over wavelength leads to another advantage for LEDs: significantly less power is required simply because unnecessary light wavelengths need not be produced. In our present-day world, using significantly less electricity is very important.
HID plant lighting can't be manufactured to only give off particular wavelengths or shades. This means that these lights will use up far more electricity than necessary.
Price
If round 1 goes to LEDs, then round 2 definitely goes to HIDs. HIDs are much less expensive compared to Light Emitting Diodes. Although prices continue to drop dramatically for LEDs they are still a new technology; and a new technology means high prices. A good HID plant light product may merely set you back a couple hundred bucks. A great LED grow lighting system will cost you at several hundred dollars more than that (around 400-600 dollars).
I would be doing a disservice if I didn’t mention that as time passes LED plant lights could actually save you money. Light Emitting Diodes last two to three times longer than HIDs and they utilize much less electricity. This means that after a year or two LEDs might actually become less costly when compared to HIDs. In addition, if you’re like me and you hate replacing things then LEDs are convenient.
Heat Diffusion
If round two goes to HIDs, then round three goes to LEDs. HIDs put off a lot of heat when compared to LED lights. This makes sense when you look at how many watts of power they are drawing. For example a 90-120 watt LED can put out as much light as a 400 watt HID. All that extra power leads to increased heat.
Increased heat isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that you’ll need to be more careful about burning things down (plants and homes are not usually fun to burn down).
The bottom line is LEDs put off a lot less heat because of the way they produce light. They don’t require a filament to be heated up and they don’t need to draw as many watts as HIDs.
So Who’s our Winner?
Unfortunately there is no clear-cut winner. Depending on your situation an LED might be a better option, but there are many circumstances when an HID is still best. HIDs have a validated history of growing great plants (and they don’t cost as much up front). LEDs are the technology of the future, but have they arrived at the point where they are useful for your average consumer? My recommendation is that you can’t go wrong with either one.
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