Thanks Alot! Just what I was looking for!
They are usually driven at 700mA, but could a higher or lower amperage be used? And what would the effects be? At this point I'm just trying to get to know the technology man, thanks for the help.
I believe the general idea is that pushing it over 700mA will produce light but it will also shorten the life of the diode substantially, and produce more heat making the unit less efficient. 700mA is the best balance between power and longevity for the majority of the panels that use 3w diodes.
As you might already know certain LED companies often use lenses on 3w LED's to get better penetration, while other companies panels are using different higher wattage LED's with a wide angle lens to attempt to get better coverage without sacrificing penetration.
never have met hid outputs..ive yet to see any output 150k lumens..if i was smart???...lol..no if the companies where they would do it and they cant. they flopped long ago and been prven by REAL growers since day one they suck. just like the missleading info in comparing cfl wattages. to many stuck on par info...if you cant get the nice fancy colour to the plant well enough all your par is nothing...need candle power/lumens also....if you where smart to youd know that.
You are correct, the coverage on LED's is pretty crappy compared to HID in that sense. 60 degree lenses on 3w LED's and 5-6w LED's are fighting this problem, but still haven't gotten to HID quality coverage. I think it's safe to say that for the small-medium grow LED's have shown they're more than adequate to keep up with HID, provided you can come up with the large start up costs.
Lumens are visible light to the human eye, and the human eye is sensitive to green light the most, which is the most useless colour to plants. Red and blue light, which are the most useful to plants, are harder for the human eye to see, so to us they don't look as bright. To a plant, it's much brighter than a comparable wattage from HID lighting.
