High Pressure Sodium - Metal Halide versus LED grow system

There were no photos of that particular grow.
Here is a pic of the light, it was 7 boards wired together and layed out in a sort of constantiner shape.



Results were as stated already, a dried oz per plant.

Just a point about Cree Xlamps and the Procyon, not sure if you know this but the Procyon is an array of 53 Cree XLamp LEDs. But theyre probably not the newest of the Cree range.

The main issue that LEDs have struggled to deal with, as is the issue with any lamp, is lumens per square foot of light intensity. There are two reasons why we need lots of lumens for big bud production, one is the obvious, plants convert light into food, and the second is light intensity triggers a reaction in plants to protect themselves against that intensity, and that is resin production,

The biggest issue with working out grams is actually having growers complete their LED grows without supplimenting their grow with other lighting. To do this the issue of lumens per square foot needs to be firstly addressed.

Lumens per square foot is a subject most LED producers avoid because they know their product doesnt cut it in the foot candle dept. So the buyers thoughts are focussed on things like percentage of light spectrum, overall lumens, megacandela ratings etc etc. Most of those things do not have any bearing on budding weed.

Has anyone been able to calculate the lumens per square foot for either the UFO or the Procyon?

420 4 fun said:

HPS/MH system

3000 watts flower (3 HPS)
12 h/day = 36kwh

500 watts veg/mom/babies (400MH, Flouros)
18 h/day = 9kwh

another 1000 watts for fans, A/C and such
15 h/day = 15kwh

4500 watts total

Electrical usage is 60kwh/day at a lower rate per day of .07 per kwh = $4.20/day of power to run a very nice setup
Some places in the USA charge a lot more for power, for instance if it is .15/kwh the daily cost would be $9.00/day

yearly costs are
$1533 @ .07kwh per year
$3300 @ .15kwh per year


Theoretically for the LED’s based on the data of efficient PAR watts, no wasted light or by-product heat, last for 15 years without changing bulbs or ballasts, use 50-75% less electricity.

YOUR GOAL is:

To make the system below YIELD equivalent harvested fruit that the HPS/MH system above consistently does ->
except with LED as the source of all lighting.

Here is the theoretical LED system:

Five 300 watt LED panels for flower (1500 watts)
12 h/day = 18kwh

One 200 watt for mother plants
One 100 watt for clones
18 h/day = 5.4kwh

No a/c

No dehumidifier

less electricity consumption

add another 700watts for misc equipment just to be sure (I think 700w is over kill, probably only need another 300-400 watts for misc)
15 h/day = 10.5

2500watts total

Electrical usage is 33.9kwh/day at a lower rate per day of .07 per kwh = $2.37/day of power to run an LED setup
@ 0.15/kwh the daily cost would be $5.09/day

yearly costs for the lower power consuming LED system are
$865 @ .07kwh per year
$1856 @ .15kwh per year

COMPARE WITH THE HPS/MH SYSTEM
yearly costs are
$1533 @ .07kwh per year
$3300 @ .15kwh per year

If the above LED system is yielding the same amount of harvested fruit per cycle as the HPS/MH system - consistently

Why wouldn’t one initially invest more and add another 2000 watts of High power LED to their garden and more than DOUBLE THE YIELD every time, and still only be using the same amount of power as the 4500 watt HPS/MH system.

I think if this was the case, 2-3 cycles later, all the high priced equipment would be paid for by the extra profits.

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how do you put 3000 watts of hps\mh against 1500 watts led???? not much of an experiment if the numbers arnt the same, or did i miss somthin, whats the lumen output

The main problem is that people believe what they read about 90watts of LED producing the same as 400 hps when it doesnt. Can they produce bud? Yes Are they the future? Yes Are they going to cost more than hps? Yes Are you going to need atleast as many LED watts as you do HID watts? Yes It seems like all your info is based of what the people selling the LEDs are saying, which so far has proven to be untrue. Now im not trying to be negative, i think LEDS are the future but your not showing us anything new yet. I wish you luck though

I think you should watch this and start your research from here, although i do hear the ufo doesnt use the best LEDS out right now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CtROw3uiVg
They did out veg the MH though which was impressive

The problem again is not the watts. You could have 20,000 watts of LEDs and you will still not get the same bud size as a 1000 watt HPS. Now before everyone jumps on my ass, let me clarify...again.

The difference between 100 watts of LED and 1000 watts of LED is the area it covers.

Example: You have a 600 watt HPS outputting a total of 95,000 lumen's running in your 6' x 3' grow space giving you 5277 lumen's per square foot, and replace it with a 1000 watt HPS which is 145000 lumen's or 8055 lumen's per square foot of the same size grow area, it occupies the same space but the lumen's go through the roof.

The restriction with LEDs at this time is that you cannot order up a 1000 watt UFO LED to replace your 90 watt UFO. In order to get 1000 watts of UFO LED light you would need to purchase another 11 UFOs, or a lamp with the amount of LEDs that would match 11 times the number of LEDs in the UFO. Hung side by side, while there would be some overlap of light from each UFO, that would not increase the lumen's per square foot by much more than say another 100 lumen's per square foot.

Now according to most websites advertising the UFO, its total output in lumen's is 3650. In the same grow space of 6' x 3' you would be getting 202 lumens per square foot.

You would need 24 of them jammed side by side in a 6 x 4 matrix in that same grow space to output the same amount of lumens per square foot as 1 x 600 watt HPS or 39 UFOs to match the lumens per square foot of a 1000 watt HPS in the same grow space.

The only way I can think that these numbers are wrong would be if all the manufacturer websites had the wrong lumen rating down. 3650 lumens is 40 lumens per 1 watt LED (90 in total).

What if they made 10watt LED bulbs? Will that be a solution?...

LED's produce Laser light - thats why it just don't work!!!

giantart said:

LED's produce Laser light - thats why it just don't work!!!

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That's just silly!

Anyone using Lumens in a discussion about LEDs needs to do the homework reading first.

Lights don't emit Lumens they emit photons, the rate at which an LED emits them is what we call the photon flux, measured in mols or Einsteins.

And lasers operate much differently than LEDs.

giantart said:

LED's produce Laser light - thats why it just don't work!!!

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