How Do LEDs Use Less Energy
- Thread starter Cpappa27
- Start date
Reeferfish
Well-Known Member
Yes they use 300w if that is what it is marked.
LEDs save electricity because (let's make this easy with nice rounded numbers)
*Imaginary numbers no real facts to wattage and lumens so dont flame me.*
Say you have a 500 watt hps. That gives of say 5000 lumens.
And you have a 250 watt led light that also puts out 5000 lumens.
That's how to get energy savings. Same output, less energy used. Less heat, less energy used to cool everything down etc...
LEDs save electricity because (let's make this easy with nice rounded numbers)
*Imaginary numbers no real facts to wattage and lumens so dont flame me.*
Say you have a 500 watt hps. That gives of say 5000 lumens.
And you have a 250 watt led light that also puts out 5000 lumens.
That's how to get energy savings. Same output, less energy used. Less heat, less energy used to cool everything down etc...
LEDs convert electricty to light more efficiently than other methods. For example, you could pass 120v through a steel rod and it would emit some light as it glows red, but most of the energy drawn would be converted to heat. Incandescent was an improvement upon that. More light, less heat. CFL the next improvement. Now LED. (HID was somewhere between incandescent and CFL.).
Most LEDs are specified as the number of watts the diodes are rated for. 60 pieces of 3w LEDs is called a "180w UFO" for example. But, LEDs are run at lower power to manage heat. You should concern yourself with both that number and the actual drawn power. This will give you an idea of how lights compare. One that runs lower power may be due to cheaper heatsinks, or could be to reduce warranty claims. A tradeoff in costs.
Not all LEDs are equally efficient. You'll need more than 30w sq. ft. from Chinese imports. Lights that use more efficient LEDs (like Area 51, Apache, Hans, Onyx) produce the same results at 20w sq. ft.
