Wow. I guess im gonna be the ass. Why would you spend so much money on this many lights for such a small amount of plants? Unless your ceilings are 15 feet high its wayyyy over kill. Plus the amount of training just to achieve yeild would be a full time job.
You're not being an ass, you just aren't correct, at all. Why would you think the ceilings need to be 15'? In the first line of this thread I linked to a guy killing it with 12,000 watts over 10 plants.
What I did do which I am almost positive is right around 5 lbs a plant with 3000 watts or 5 600 watt lights per plant. I did this with no clone, but with Pisces hollywood haze right here at the farm. What's mind boggling is I did this with 7 foot ceilings. I am absolutely positive that it is possible to pull 8 to 10 lbs indoors per plant.
You don't need an absurd amount of plants to produce big numbers. There's actually a thread on other forums where a guy averages 8lb 3oz lbs per plant (4 plants) with a 3 week veg and 9 week flower period. The secret? A lot of fucking light per plant, way more than people think is necessary. That guy runs 2,000w per plant. My revised and current plan is to do 6,582.87w over 16 plants so around 411w per plant and I'm going to do a 4 week veg. Even with 10k over 10 plants that's half of what the 8lb guy ran in his grow.
Thats it? So 20 plus pounds on the 10k hps watts and he's going to save a grand?
What do you mean 20 plus pounds on HPS? I'm nearly matching a 1000w HPS in initial usable light output with 268.57w less power and sustaining that output while HPS drops by nearly 30% over a 3 month period and requires me to change the bulbs after each cycle. The only difference in favor of HPS nowadays is initial cost of buying the fixtures. If you matched the power draw, LED would absolutely crush HPS. After talking with all of these people who switched from HPS to LED, researching the subject myself, and observing the numerous grows posted using LED; its a no brainer now...I can't imagine a scenario where I'd choose HPS over LED now that LED is so affordable.
4 Week Veg, 10 Week Flower, 9 Lights
If I went with HPS, I'd likely still build LED fixtures for veg. So we'll just assume the same power draw for veg with HPS and LED.
HPS: Flower watts used = 9,000
LED: Flower watts used = 6,582.87
HPS electricity costs = $907.20/cycle || $277.68/month || $3,332.16/year
LED electricity costs = $663.55/cycle || $203.10/month || $2,437.20/year
Electricity savings = $243.65/cycle || $74.58/month || $894.96/year
Bulb replacement costs = $944.91/cycle
Total savings = $1188.56/cycle || $363.80/month || $4,365.69/year
Replacing the bulbs is more expensive than running the lights. At this point, I'd like to hear a solid argument in favor of HPS over LED.
