LED Grow Lights Review – Getting The Best Results From 2010 Models
LED grow lights came on the market a few years ago to the tune of rejection and controversy. How can they possibly compare to the HID grow light standard and are they able to produce the same results as outlined in all the hype? By doing my homework and some basic comparison, I found that the best LED grow lights are more than capable of outperforming the standard.
When using LED grow lights, it is vital to understand that you are trading the high-intensity brute force concept (expensive energy cost) of metal halide and high pressure sodium grow lights for the focused power of an LED grow light.
With the typical HID setup, you must spend a crazy amount of money on accessories such as heat extraction fans, ducting, ballasts, and so forth. Because all wavelengths of light are emitted – from red to blue and all the colors in between – your plants are bombarded with excess light and heat that do not help the plant grow. With an average efficiency of about 15%, most energy from HID grow lights is thrown away in the form of useless light (light that cannot assist in photosynthesis) and potentially harmful heat. You may as well be lighting your money on fire.
The best LED grow lights boast 95% efficiency, which is to say that nearly all of the light emitted can be absorbed by the plants you grow. They produce a negligible amount of heat and near zero light is wasted. This is accomplished only by thorough research and development to target specific wavelengths of light which contribute the most usable energy to the process of photosynthesis. The most beneficial colors for growing plants is in the blue, red, and to some extent, orange wavelengths. If you think about this for a minute, it makes perfect sense because, after all, plants are green, which means they reflect all green light and most yellow light. This renders green and yellow light useless to plants – so why buy a grow light that wastes electricity on producing these spectrums?
To be sure, choosing the right LED grow light for your indoor garden has its challenges. Just like any other product in existence there is a wide range of quality represented by the various brands available on the market. From the very basic models up to the Mercedes of LED grow lights, styles range in price, shape, light colors, and power output that all play a part in determining your success as an indoor grower. I can tell you from experience that, for the most part, you get what you pay for.
It’s not to say that the only way to be successful is to buy the most expensive thing out there because cost is not the determining factor of quality. More important that cost is the quality and composition of the components used in manufacturing your LED grow light that is more closely related to growing success.
What you need to look for in an LED grow light is the power of each individual LED bulb. It is common to find 225 LED grow panels for sale very cheap – around $50-$100, however, you would totally waste your money. Each bulb in such an array typically has only 0.06 Watts. This is severely underpowered – unless of course you only want to grow a 4 inch tall plant. Because of the lack of power, you will get poor results, no canopy penetration, spindly plants, and some plants just wont grow or flower at all. The minimum power output to look for is 1 Watt per bulb – about 16 times more output than “bargain” LED grow lights and you are still saving a ton of money in electricity.
When using high quality LED grow lights you get powerful, highly targeted light to your plants. You will enjoy the success of thick, stocky plants with huge blooms and the biggest yields possible when growing inside.