4 Tips When Selecting LED Grow Light
- Categories:Industry News
- Author:Ways Yi
- Origin:
- Time of issue:2021-11-29 15:32
- Views:
(Summary description)4 Tips When Selecting LED Grow Light: 1.Calculate LED wattage for flower cannabis plants 2.Choose right full spectrum for your plants 3.Control the heat dissipation 4.Spreading the light around your grow area
4 Tips When Selecting LED Grow Light
(Summary description)4 Tips When Selecting LED Grow Light:
1.Calculate LED wattage for flower cannabis plants
2.Choose right full spectrum for your plants
3.Control the heat dissipation
4.Spreading the light around your grow area
- Categories:Industry News
- Author:Ways Yi
- Origin:
- Time of issue:2021-11-29 15:32
- Views:
1. Calculate LED wattage for flower cannabis plants
The traditional power measurement for grow lights has been Watts which has made things simple up until the development of LED. A Watt of power equals 1 Watt of power output of light. The confusion comes when you try to measure LED grow lights in Watts. In the case of LED, a Watt of power into the light isn’t a Watt of power out of the light. Since LEDs are much more efficient than incandescent bulbs we must use a different measurement to qualify the power being generated by the LED grow light.
You might have heard or read the term “PAR” related to led grow lights, this is the actual measurement of the useable light spectrum produced by the LED. You see LEDs get their efficacy from not converting as much energy into heat compared to incandescent bulbs. This means that more of the energy used by the LED grow light is converted to actual usable grow light.
2. Choose right full spectrum for your plants
I opened this article mentioning “PAR” which stands for photo-synthetically active radiation. This measurement of light is often referred to as full spectrum light. Full spectrum lights are the wave lengths of light between 440 nm and 700 nm which includes ultraviolet and infrared. Cannabis plants use this whole spectrum to photosynthesize light into simple sugars.
When purchasing a LED grow light system, you will find that the higher end systems will all be full spectrum. Be cautious when investigating cheaper grow lights as manufactures sometimes claim to be full-spectrum but don’t provide IF and IR LED Chips in their units.
3. Control the heat dissipation
It is true that LED grow lights produce about 40% less heat than traditional incandescent light bulbs. LEDs achieve this by producing only useful light spectrums for growing plants, it cuts out all the white light which greatly reduces the heat generated.
LEDs which is short for light emitting diodes, are solid state electronics. As with all electronics, heat is the enemy. With LED grow lights excessive heat means ware on the electronics. LED chips that are normally rated for 50,000 or more hours can have their lifespan greatly reduced by overheating.
Quality LED grow light manufactures engineer their units with fans and heat syncs which greatly dissipate heat. Heat is drawn into aluminum heat syncs where cooler air drawn into the light unit and over the surfaces. This brings a great reduction in heat to the LED grow unit as well as the whole growing area. The heat left over from the grow light is generally easily managed with simple ventilation of your grow area. I find that my 1000-Watt LED panel produces a temperature that sustains the grow area at 85 degrees Fahrenheit or 30 degrees Celsius without extra ventilation or fans.
4. Spreading the light around your grow area
LED grow lights make use of lenses to direct light out of the LED structure and into your plants. All LED’s have a primary lens to deal with this. Some manufacturers add a secondary lens to their grow lights to direct the light into wider beams to create more coverage or into narrow beams to create more intensity.
Each time a lens is added in front of an LED the power of the LED is reduced by 8-10% but the increase in efficacy for the plants great out ways the slight energy loss.
These optics are generally made of plastic or glass and tend to have a focus of between 90 and 120 degrees.
Some deceptive manufactures advertise that their lenses increase the intensity of light that is passed through them but this is not possible. The intensity can only be increased with more power while the lenses decrease intensity by expanding the lights foot print or increasing intensity by reducing the foot print.
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