Huge Led grow light

i dunno how in gods name they charge that kind of money for those ... you can get 1000 3 watt leds for 650.00 dollars and the ballast for about 50.00 and a board to mount them on for 20 that works out to be 720.00 that leaves labor at 2000.00 dollars that allows for 1280 for miscelaneous parts , labor , advertising and pure profit for each one of those units. its hiway robbery. and when you are done you end up with a fancy litebrite that doesnt even grow pot very well

marchold said:

the people who sell LED grow lights lie so much about there potential that it makes it difficult to have sensible discussion about LED's. We all know that 90w LED does not equal 400w HPS, and in fact 400w HPS is better than 400w LED.

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Yeah for sure. The thing with lighting is that it almost needs to be framed in two conversations. Vegging and flowering. This is because the results vary so dramatically. An example of this is LED lighting during vegatative growth. A 150 watt LED lamp that is an array of LEDs layed out of 800mm x 600mm area emitting 4000 lumens per square foot, will veg plants as good as a 400w metal halide will....up to a certain height.

After plants have passed the best potential height which is just over a foot under LEDs, then the metal halides will excell and the LEDs will drop back lack in penetrative light.

But in saying that, most growers will veg to a foot anyways before switching, so in those circumstances it is true to say that the LED array as I explained would match the metal halide even though you are only spending 150 watts of LED lighting.

However once you switch to flowering the demands from the plant to propgate big bud surpass what any LED lamp on the market can deliver.

Not only do the plants need 10,000 lumens per square foot of light to produce enough photosynthesis to build big bud, they also need the intensity as a means of generating resistance against the light intensity. The resistance is of course resin which the plants produce to protect them against the intensity of lumens.

So to me it is just being too simplistic when people say LEDs are better or worse than some other form of lighting.

The results say everything to me. I have vegged nice bushy tightly noded 1 foot plants under LEDs, floros and HIDs. But only flowered real big bud under HIDs, although when I flowered with floros the one time I did get 2.75 oz per plant.

Phinxter said:

i dunno how in gods name they charge that kind of money for those ... you can get 1000 3 watt leds for 650.00 dollars and the ballast for about 50.00 and a board to mount them on for 20 that works out to be 720.00 that leaves labor at 2000.00 dollars that allows for 1280 for miscelaneous parts , labor , advertising and pure profit for each one of those units. its hiway robbery. and when you are done you end up with a fancy litebrite that doesnt even grow pot very well

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The Chinese websites I did see those LEDs being sold on were mainly aiming at the greehouse market as additional lighting to the sun rather than stand alone dope lights. So the idea was to mount them at the top of your greenhouse say 2.5 metres up and they would act as a fill in.

The problem here is the way they have been repackaged by US based resellers...and of course, at over twice the price.

i like the phrase "stand alone dope lights"

i havent heard anything great or atleast nothing amazing to make me spend the money