These bulbs are extremely hot(they can melt themselves!), and produce tons of unusable light, just like the sun(roughly only 25% plant-usable/PUR/PAR). They were created back in the early 90's and were deemed a commercial failure.. still in the 90'S.
LEDs are clearly the future of lighting for quite a foreseeable time. They have the highest luminous efficiency(while still producing good light, sorry LPS), and are 'tunable' to various wavelengths. Plus they are the most directional light source(normal bulb radiates 360 degrees, an LED is less than half of that).
This a completely different breed of plasma lighting THERE ARE NO MOVING PARTS TO COME APART! (please read opening post thoroughly)
the problem with LED is it's limitation of power output how many LED's do want in your bank is the question to watt output because you don;t see them making 700watt LED's. One point source as opposed to a bank 2 foot by 4 foot long?
May I share where I agree with you though?
Imagine this; To build an LED fixture the ideal situation is to have at least a three to one ratio of Red to Blue correct?
Well imagine having at least double the wattage of Red LED (500 watts) and one 250 watt plasma Light Source as a foundation covering all the frequencies not covered by the couple of banks of wide coverage high output red and far red LED's. To my scientific mind there could be no better combination. This way it reaches a higher PAR rating by amplifying the red on TOP of the foundation that's perfect for the Veg cycle (including the perfect amount of red) This way the supplementation accentuates the foundation instead of having only two points of the whole chromatic spectrum represented have them all.
The Ideal set up for this scenario is having the PLS in the middle and the Red LED's on the sides of the grow environment. They say soon, with the upgrades being made to the PLS system there will be no need of supplementation but I think they may be wrong since the ideal amount of red is far higher than any single driver can produce.
