blackstar 240 how many plants can it grow to full maturity?

Regardless of which is more efficient. 1w, 3w, 5w. The.higher the watts on the diode the more it penetrates and a larger foot print. Therefore you want 3w over 1 w .

Do you have any evidence of this statement? Seems not true to me.

it just seems commonn sense. a 600 watt hid will penetrate more than 400 watt. an 54 watt t5 will penetrate more than a 24 watt t5, etc...

i know it depends on lenses too. 1w with 60 degree lenses can come close to matching the penetration of 3w with 90 degree lenses but the 1w will have a smaller foot print. If you use same lenses on both. Then 3 w still beats it.

Theres a study with Ed Rosental, University of Maryland, and NASA all working together with led experimentation. I cant seem to find it right now. I know there is a video on you tube where Ed Rosenthal gives a lecture about it. I have both bookmarked on my computer at home. so I'll post it later.

Texas A&M did a study with led 1w , 2w , 3w diodes and t5's, doing the effects of infrared light on plants too.

patrikantonius said:

Do you have any evidence of this statement? Seems not true to me.

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This is true, if you take a LED flashlight that has 5 - 1 watt diodes and hold it 15" from a wall side by side with a LED flashlight with a single 2 watt diode at 15", the 2 watt flashlight will have a brighter hot spot while the flashlight running the 5 - 1 watt will have a bigger hot spot. But now if you draw back the 2 watt light back to 20" it will match if not surpass the 1 watt light in hot spot size and intensity, this shows the efficiency gain.

The above can also even be seen on a smaller scale using other kinds of light such as CFL's. If you do the same experiment with 2 - 26 watt bulbs vs a single 40 watt bulb you can still see a difference though not as drastically as with LED's. To sum it up, 1 watt diodes would have to be drastically closer to equal the penetration of 3 watt diodes but if you do that you are sacrificing coverage to a large degree.

BlackMesa said:

That's not really a fair question at all because: Yes they can reach 3 watts per diode because they are 3 watt diodes but the drivers won't allow it. Most importantly, if the drivers did kick out enough juice then the cost to cool the diode would up the energy intake, raise the price or both.

My point was that there IS a difference in the size of diode that can justify labeling a panel by it's diode size combined vs power draw. A 140 watt actual wattage consumed panel using 3 watt diodes has much better penetration and growing ability vs the same wattage panel composed of 1 watt diodes so labeling your panel by actual wattage don't do much for a consumer making a decision either.

So what does help a consumer? Well IMO having both the diode capacity total wattage & the wattage consumed, because 1 without the other is meaningless.

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I totally agree, what is really bad, is when it's diode capacity that are displayed in bold and the real draw is missing, and people starts comparing capacity vs. actual draw, without know the difference.

par with led's mate,not lumens

any more yield results and how many plants per light benchmark

My first led grow was with 2 blk star 240's, 3 white widow veg'd for 45 days and the yeid was 4.25 oz. My current grow is 10 plants with 4 240's, from seed and veg'd 28 days. They are now in week 5, I think I will yield around 1/2 to 3/4 oz per plant, maybe more if I am lucky.

Interesting setup u have there, how far are the lights from plant? would like to see harvest/yield of these!

Equinox117 said:

par with led's mate,not lumens

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i disagree, yes the better PAR in LED's is good... but you still need the lumens for monster crops.

kwalker0716 said:

Interesting setup u have there, how far are the lights from plant? would like to see harvest/yield of these!

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The LEDs are about 8" above the tops, I have them arranged by height under the 4 blackstars.

As I was unimpressed by the penatation of most led lights and can`t afford to buy budzilla lights

I started a project to use 50w red leds the idea was to later build units that would use 5 50w red leds and 1 50w blue leds with a bit of supplemental cfl side lights this is a pure flowering light as I can clone or grow seeds in my aeroponics station or just use soil under some 5700k cfl`s or an old 180w (120w actual) multi spectrum led grow light. I only run 6 plants any my flowering deck is only around 1m high so penetration wise I`m looking for around 80cm I`m pretty sure that 50w leds will give a good level of light up to 1m away from the bulb and that 100w leds will reach around 2m`s

I have listed parts that can be brought from ebay to build the light`s I am just waiting for some red 50w leds to show up so that I can test out my design`s before buying some red with uv led chips as they cost more and I did not know they made and sold them the uv part of the chips should offer enough blue spectrum to keep a plant that is just going to be flowered once healthy for the 8 to 14 weeks it will be under it

Anyway the tread is here..... https://www.rollitup.org/grow-room-design-setup/579340-any-thoughts-50w-100w-led.html

Happy to get views and input from people my 500w blackstars are nice lights for the money I got them for £60 each second hand so can`t complain but no way would I shell out £400 each new for them.

and I run 2 short plants under each one a bit wasteful power wise but you get better bud, I`m going back to cloning now that my grow is all set up the way I like it and I have the equipment and space I need that`s why I need to build these lights so that I can get more space as 3 300 to 500w led panels take up too much space and restrict how high my plants can go.