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LED Grow Lights: The Little Diodes That Could.
Indoor gardening has always had a need for artificial lighting and it isn't a wonder why so much enthusiasm is swarming around the new LED grow lights. Whether it is to reduce electricity costs with their increase in efficiency, longer life spans, and less heat output or whether you are looking to be able to fully customize your color frequencies, LED lights are holding all the best cards in the game. But is it really worth the additional buy in cost to upgrade from your previous system?
Energy Efficiency
Metal Halide and High Pressure Sodium Lights have been the industry standard for several decades now. The problem with these two lighting systems is that they require copious amounts of electricity to keep them going. Average indoor gardens will require between 25-40 watts of conventional light per square foot of growing space. If you have a moderate sized garden around 40 square feet, this can cost the farmer as much as $960 per year. On the other hand, LED grow lights require much less electricity for a number of reasons that will be covered, all of which assist the lights in only require 25% of the energy used for the purpose of lighting. That means a year of operating LED lights over the conventional High Pressure Sodium or Metal Halide lights could save as much as $720 per year. The annual cost of operating the LED grow lights would only be around $240.
Less Heat
Many plants have specific tolerances when it comes to heat as well as additional evaporation caused by higher levels of heat. Conventional grow lights will operate in the upper 700 degrees Fahrenheit which can cause some unwanted wilting and scorching if temperatures aren't managed with additional cooling devices and fans. Operating an air conditioning unit requires extensive amounts of electricity further adding to the operating cost of the indoor garden. LED lights on the other hand operate at temperatures close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit which means less energy is required to keep the grow area cool. Less plant damage results and a more diverse growing spectrum of plant species can grow side by side without the worry of reducing heat for a particularly sensitive plant.
How Long Do LED Lights Last?
LED grow lights also last much longer than HPS or MH lamps. At over 50,000 (some as high as 100,000) hours of functional use, this is significantly longer than the average of 20,000 hours of the HPS and MH lights. Lamps are not cheap either. This means less downtime and less replacement. That means less money in the long run needing to be spent.
Light Frequency Optimization
Many of the manufacturers of the LED grow light systems allow you to create your own lighting array with a balance of reds and blues to maximize vegetating or flowering stages of your plant life cycle. Of course, they also have standard blue/red ratios that will provide a suitable mix for both but it is certainly a benefit to be able to customize the light spectrum if you so desire. The conventional lighting systems have many colors that are nearly unusable to the plant during photosynthesis like yellows and oranges. LED lights on the other hand emphasize the colors that are most effective for the plant producing better yields.
It's obvious that as energy costs continue to increase that indoor gardening is going to need to continue to adapt. Many people are making the switch to this type of artificial lighting and it is pretty obvious why. It is now both economical and biologically more productive to make the switch. So what are you waiting for?
About the Author Vladmir Skillet holds a blog about Indoor Gardening. For more information on Grow Lights, check out his post on why he has made the switch.
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