Johnny Lawrence
Well-Known Member
^ Science!@skorpio777 you are not alone in being confused! Any time a manufacturer puts a word in front of "power" (like comparable power) it's marketing and only serves to muddy the water. (It's meant to muddy the water.) I have no problem reading through the BS and the hype and they still got me, three times! When I first started growing, I didn't like the thought of needing so much energy to grow indoors... I did some research and, despite a very skeptical conversation with a caretaker/dispensary owner, I bought a first gen LED... It was great for vegging but I never even attempted to flower with it... A little more research and about 300 bucks later, I purchased a second-gen, 150 watt LED to flower one auto... During the first flower cycle a driver went out taking out half of the array... I finished the grow with a high powered CFL and immediately ordered a 600 watt HPS, which I still use today (6 years later) The six months before I made the move to HPS were somewhat disappointing but a valuable lesson to me.
I still believe LEDs are the future, but, despite the obvious comparisons to the digitization of cameras, there are more real physical limitations to digitizing this process. (Digital cameras read input, where the laws of physics have less restraint on the process... LED lights output light (power)... While physical laws apply in both processes, the laws relating to output power are more challenging... Added to all the power complexity of the issue, digitization of the light provided to the plant, is still more focused on overcoming output power challenges, limiting the ability provide an optimal solution from the plant's perspective. I am encouraged by the people focused on optimizing the digitization of the light source, regardless of cost, because this is the only way the technology will improve enough to match the performance of established technologies... Once they hit that point, then they can focus on optimizing the cost so the economics make sense. Best of luck!
LMAO