You will get a heck of a lot more light out of a 3 watt diode run at 1 watt than a 1 watt diode run at 1 watt. Knowing the wattage of the diodes isn’t useless, though. It can be good to be suspicious of overly round numbers – you are likely getting the diode rating and not the actual power draw. So, what was called a 90w grow light could really be 45w (or less!).īottom line, you want actual power draw, not LED wattage rating. To use a simple example, a grow light could call itself 90 watt if it has thirty 3 watt LED’s, however, it is common practice to run LED’s at half wattage to reduce heat production (and therefore heatsink cost) and increase efficiency. Others, typically lesser brands, will give you the max wattage rating of the LED diodes. Some manufacturers (the better ones) give the actual wattage the unit uses – the wall plug wattage. This is the most common measure of grow light intensity and is a measure of electricity (watt = amp x volt). There are a number of ways of measuring the intensity of a grow light – some good and others bad. While there are no doubt that grow light spectrum is important, some studies suggest that even more important than spectrum is light intensity. For instance, 450nm, 660nm, and high kelvin white (white LEDs are 450nm with a phosphor coating) are very efficient, while green LEDs are not very efficient. While some LED companies market themselves as having many different color LEDs, this can often be at sacrificed efficiency, since each color of LED has a different efficiency at producing light. Achieving High Efficiencyīrands increase their efficiency by having high quality diodes, running them at low energy, having excellent heat management, and using a high percent of the most efficient diode wavelengths. Remember to convert between milliwatt and watt, as necessary (1000 milliwatts = 1 watt). Wall plug efficiency can be calculated using a diode’s radiant flux (not luminous flux, which is a measure of how bright a light appears to the human eye and not how many photons it is producing) divided by the total wattage of electricity the diode uses. For instance, high quality blue LEDs at 450nm can reach wall plug efficiencies of 60%, red LEDs at 660nm with 50% WPE, and green 530nm with 25% WPE. It’s not typical to rate a grow light’s wall plug efficiency, but high-quality diodes made specifically for horticulture occasionally have this listed. The rest gets turned into heat that will need to be dealt with in the grow light itself as well as the room that houses the light. This can be expressed as a percentage, such as 60% “wall plug efficiency,” which means that 60% of the electricity that goes through the light gets converted into light. This is a ratio of the amount of energy put in and the amount of light produced. Wall Plug EfficiencyĪnother measurement relevant to DIY LED grow light enthusiasts is wall plug efficiency (WPE). Top brand HPS (high pressure sodium) lights are around 1.7 μmol/j. Many of the most efficient LED grow lights are low power and, as a buyer, you may have to weigh out whether you are looking for efficiency or intensity, because at times one can be at the sacrifice of the other. Highly efficient LED grow light range from 1.5 μmol/j and up (this number is constantly improving). That’s a dizzyingly large amount of photons! That means that for every joule of electrical energy (joule = watt * second) a certain number of photon micromoles are produced. The industry standard for measuring grow light efficiency is micromole per joule (sometimes written as umol/j, μmol/j, umolj -1 or PPF/W). Below is some advice on how to know what a truly great LED grow light looks like. The market has been flooded with grow light options and it can be quite challenging to figure out which light is best for you. There was a time when choosing a grow light was simple – all you needed to know was what brand and wattage you wanted. Do ChilLED grow lights work? Just take a look at that monster chard!
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