Hello people and happy new year.
This year for the first time I have decided to do a full grow from seed to harvest using only LED lighting!
I actually looked back at my receipt and it is coming up to nearly 5 years that I first started growing with LED lights.
Back then infra red and uv lights had just been introduced and were the latest craze so I got myself an 11 band spectrum light with 100 x 3watt diodes drawing about 150watts of power.
The spectrums used were 380/415/440/460/480/615/630/660/720/740/760nm
This led is still going strong being used 18 hours per day for vegg only.
Like many growers trying out led lighting I discovered that led lighting even with 11 bands just wasn't ready yet, it just wasn't comparing to HPS, the plants didn't grow right and I attempted flowering but could tell I was wasting my time with leds.
Well that was 5 years ago. I decided to do a bit of research as to what has been going on in the LED market and I found some interesting info since.
I remember 5 years ago people were saying 3watts are good but lack the penetration that hps provides. Now 5 years later 5 watt and 10 watt diodes are being sold but people are saying 3 watt diodes are in fact the most efficient now with 10 watts using more power than the 3 watt equivalent.
Cobs are the latest technology being introduced it seems but I have not been overly sold on them yet. Maybe someone can help me with a good link to why cobs are better than no cobs? I know they are the right spectrum and I have seen 500 watts of cobs compare to a 1000watt hps over in america already.
The biggest breakthrough in LED technology is in my opinion the fact that more is understood about the spectrums we should be providing.
If you look at the spectrum of my 11 band light there are 3 diodes emitting infra red light at 720, 740 and 760 nm
There is also 1 diode emmitting UV light at 380nm.
Although a lot of people believe these wavelengths are beneficial it has been shown that plants can only absord between 400-700nm
Anything outside of these ranges can't be absorbed and is thus wasted light, so in my optinion 4 of my 11 bands are wasted.
Even if the uv might promote higher thc content I doubt one tiny 3w led over the entire grow area (1 diode out of the 100 is a uv at 380nm) will make any difference and even then uv diodes are the least efficient diode producing very little energy, also it is UVB that is if at all meant to boost thc, 380nm is UVA and thus does nothing useful. I would much prefer to have one more red diode instead that will definetely produce a bit more weight.
The other big discovery has been that too much blue light is detrimental, anything over 20% blue spectrum has been shown to stunt growth. The ideal ratio is between 5:1 to 8:1 red to blue light. Regardless of vegg or flower, yes plants respond well to a maybe 10% or 20% increase in red light in flowering but you see grow lights with a 1:1 ratio of blue to red, this is no good.
The third major breakthrough and in my opinion the biggest one is that green light is not just wasted light as has been claimed for so long.
Finally NASA has evidence that green light is used more efficiently to produce energy in foliage plants than blue light.
The reason it has been believed for so long that green light is useless is because a lot of early research with led's was performed on aquatic plants and the fish hobbyist market.
For them red and blue are king with green not penetrating water far enough to do aquatic plants much good.
Hower on land for plants outside of water with leaves it has now been shown that green light is not wasted, plants have adapted to use green light also and it forms an important role for leafy plants which is not yet fully understood.
One thing we do know is that red and blue are absorbed readily at the canopy, being very efficient doing so and letting no light get through to the canopy below.
What this means is the plant has to divert energy from the canopy to create growth below where growth comes out looking weird (compared to a plant grown outdoors).
Ok so back to why led's so far have not persuaded me to change from hps is this spindly undergrowth pattern and nobody knowing why on paper led's are far more efficient than HPS yet in practice the lights lack penetration and undergrowth comes out spindly. One reason is that led's so far lack green light, It has now been shown that red and blue is absorbed at the canopy whereas green is not absorbed very efficiently at all and thus passes through the leaves and travels down the veins and stems getting absorbed along the way till it is all absorbed by the lower canopy.
Also if you leave out green light then you must provide more red and blue light in order to compete with the hps.
The hps is already in most cases delivering at 100% of what the plants can absorb (just inefficiently using more electricity) so in order for an led to compete it has to provide more red and blue but this in turn overloads the plant and creates burnt leaves.
A very common problem with led's apparently from google searches.
So if leds, can provide energy via a third wavelength then the plant can receive 50% more energy than using just red and blue and suddenyl leds are performing as well as hps's using 30-40% less energy.
I have provided a few of the sources I came across supporting the green light theory in case anyone wants to do some reading:
This user cannot post links as he is not liked enough
Ok so if only it were that simple. It seems that the reason manufacturers have been pushing this red/blue spectrum stuff has been half based on truths but also based on what was available on the market. Red diodes are the most efficient producing the most amount of photons per watt and are the cheapest to make.
Green diodes are terrible and using them would be taking a step back in trying to compete with HPS.
However a new diode has been invented which is a full spectrum white light diode. It's a 425nm blue diode coated with a yellow phosphorous coating that gives off a very nice white light. When the blue light hits the yellow phosphorous coating, green light is produces along with a wide range of other spectrums that can all be absorbed by the plant.
It has been discovered that these white light diodes produce more green light than the green diodes we currently have and they also produce red, blue and many other colours that can all be absorbed by the plant so a very efficient light.
The newest led on the market in the uk is the Plessey Hyperion white light using only white diodes producing 1.9 mol per watt
can't post a link but you can find it on google
and if you look at the light spectrum is emits there is plenty of red, plenty of green and a bit of blue.
Based on my latest research it is the best led available here in the uk at the moment however it is out of my price range.
I have since come across the Bloomspect 600w led light and think it ticks all the boxes. Has no useless wavelengths, a lot of red, a bit of blue and some white bulbs to fill in the missing spectrums.
can't post the link yet again but you can find it on amazon
I know its a cheap copy and won't be as good as the best but it is 5+ times cheaper so I am going to give this light a go for flowering this year. The youtube reviews look good, the internet reveiws look good, the specs look good.
Anybody with some advice or experience with the bloomspect, let me know what you think.
After writing all of this down I feel like this is more of an experiment than trusted evidence but the technology at £100 for a 600w light that draws about 300 watts I think is cheap enough to justify this experiment.
The only other alternative I found which is still a lot more expensive is from budtech UK
This light looks really good and has the latest cob technology but it is a lot more expensive still so I have decided to try the bloomspect for now and hopefully in 3 years time I can switch to cobs when they should be more affordable.
Sorry about the long post. Worried I might be wasting my time but hopeful that I have found a light that can create a similar spectrum to the cob lights and be a bit more efficient than HPS.
I have read so many posts about people switching to LED's only to have realised they've wasted several months to then switch back again. I'm hoping that has all been down to the lack of green in led lights so far which has now been addressed with white diodes and white chip cobs.
Thanks guys. Happy growing
This year for the first time I have decided to do a full grow from seed to harvest using only LED lighting!
I actually looked back at my receipt and it is coming up to nearly 5 years that I first started growing with LED lights.
Back then infra red and uv lights had just been introduced and were the latest craze so I got myself an 11 band spectrum light with 100 x 3watt diodes drawing about 150watts of power.
The spectrums used were 380/415/440/460/480/615/630/660/720/740/760nm
This led is still going strong being used 18 hours per day for vegg only.
Like many growers trying out led lighting I discovered that led lighting even with 11 bands just wasn't ready yet, it just wasn't comparing to HPS, the plants didn't grow right and I attempted flowering but could tell I was wasting my time with leds.
Well that was 5 years ago. I decided to do a bit of research as to what has been going on in the LED market and I found some interesting info since.
I remember 5 years ago people were saying 3watts are good but lack the penetration that hps provides. Now 5 years later 5 watt and 10 watt diodes are being sold but people are saying 3 watt diodes are in fact the most efficient now with 10 watts using more power than the 3 watt equivalent.
Cobs are the latest technology being introduced it seems but I have not been overly sold on them yet. Maybe someone can help me with a good link to why cobs are better than no cobs? I know they are the right spectrum and I have seen 500 watts of cobs compare to a 1000watt hps over in america already.
The biggest breakthrough in LED technology is in my opinion the fact that more is understood about the spectrums we should be providing.
If you look at the spectrum of my 11 band light there are 3 diodes emitting infra red light at 720, 740 and 760 nm
There is also 1 diode emmitting UV light at 380nm.
Although a lot of people believe these wavelengths are beneficial it has been shown that plants can only absord between 400-700nm
Anything outside of these ranges can't be absorbed and is thus wasted light, so in my optinion 4 of my 11 bands are wasted.
Even if the uv might promote higher thc content I doubt one tiny 3w led over the entire grow area (1 diode out of the 100 is a uv at 380nm) will make any difference and even then uv diodes are the least efficient diode producing very little energy, also it is UVB that is if at all meant to boost thc, 380nm is UVA and thus does nothing useful. I would much prefer to have one more red diode instead that will definetely produce a bit more weight.
The other big discovery has been that too much blue light is detrimental, anything over 20% blue spectrum has been shown to stunt growth. The ideal ratio is between 5:1 to 8:1 red to blue light. Regardless of vegg or flower, yes plants respond well to a maybe 10% or 20% increase in red light in flowering but you see grow lights with a 1:1 ratio of blue to red, this is no good.
The third major breakthrough and in my opinion the biggest one is that green light is not just wasted light as has been claimed for so long.
Finally NASA has evidence that green light is used more efficiently to produce energy in foliage plants than blue light.
The reason it has been believed for so long that green light is useless is because a lot of early research with led's was performed on aquatic plants and the fish hobbyist market.
For them red and blue are king with green not penetrating water far enough to do aquatic plants much good.
Hower on land for plants outside of water with leaves it has now been shown that green light is not wasted, plants have adapted to use green light also and it forms an important role for leafy plants which is not yet fully understood.
One thing we do know is that red and blue are absorbed readily at the canopy, being very efficient doing so and letting no light get through to the canopy below.
What this means is the plant has to divert energy from the canopy to create growth below where growth comes out looking weird (compared to a plant grown outdoors).
Ok so back to why led's so far have not persuaded me to change from hps is this spindly undergrowth pattern and nobody knowing why on paper led's are far more efficient than HPS yet in practice the lights lack penetration and undergrowth comes out spindly. One reason is that led's so far lack green light, It has now been shown that red and blue is absorbed at the canopy whereas green is not absorbed very efficiently at all and thus passes through the leaves and travels down the veins and stems getting absorbed along the way till it is all absorbed by the lower canopy.
Also if you leave out green light then you must provide more red and blue light in order to compete with the hps.
The hps is already in most cases delivering at 100% of what the plants can absorb (just inefficiently using more electricity) so in order for an led to compete it has to provide more red and blue but this in turn overloads the plant and creates burnt leaves.
A very common problem with led's apparently from google searches.
So if leds, can provide energy via a third wavelength then the plant can receive 50% more energy than using just red and blue and suddenyl leds are performing as well as hps's using 30-40% less energy.
I have provided a few of the sources I came across supporting the green light theory in case anyone wants to do some reading:
This user cannot post links as he is not liked enough
Ok so if only it were that simple. It seems that the reason manufacturers have been pushing this red/blue spectrum stuff has been half based on truths but also based on what was available on the market. Red diodes are the most efficient producing the most amount of photons per watt and are the cheapest to make.
Green diodes are terrible and using them would be taking a step back in trying to compete with HPS.
However a new diode has been invented which is a full spectrum white light diode. It's a 425nm blue diode coated with a yellow phosphorous coating that gives off a very nice white light. When the blue light hits the yellow phosphorous coating, green light is produces along with a wide range of other spectrums that can all be absorbed by the plant.
It has been discovered that these white light diodes produce more green light than the green diodes we currently have and they also produce red, blue and many other colours that can all be absorbed by the plant so a very efficient light.
The newest led on the market in the uk is the Plessey Hyperion white light using only white diodes producing 1.9 mol per watt
can't post a link but you can find it on google
and if you look at the light spectrum is emits there is plenty of red, plenty of green and a bit of blue.
Based on my latest research it is the best led available here in the uk at the moment however it is out of my price range.
I have since come across the Bloomspect 600w led light and think it ticks all the boxes. Has no useless wavelengths, a lot of red, a bit of blue and some white bulbs to fill in the missing spectrums.
can't post the link yet again but you can find it on amazon
I know its a cheap copy and won't be as good as the best but it is 5+ times cheaper so I am going to give this light a go for flowering this year. The youtube reviews look good, the internet reveiws look good, the specs look good.
Anybody with some advice or experience with the bloomspect, let me know what you think.
After writing all of this down I feel like this is more of an experiment than trusted evidence but the technology at £100 for a 600w light that draws about 300 watts I think is cheap enough to justify this experiment.
The only other alternative I found which is still a lot more expensive is from budtech UK
This light looks really good and has the latest cob technology but it is a lot more expensive still so I have decided to try the bloomspect for now and hopefully in 3 years time I can switch to cobs when they should be more affordable.
Sorry about the long post. Worried I might be wasting my time but hopeful that I have found a light that can create a similar spectrum to the cob lights and be a bit more efficient than HPS.
I have read so many posts about people switching to LED's only to have realised they've wasted several months to then switch back again. I'm hoping that has all been down to the lack of green in led lights so far which has now been addressed with white diodes and white chip cobs.
Thanks guys. Happy growing
