LED lighting question

There aren't any... To replace a 1000w hps you need an led that draws a 1000w from the mains. I think some of the blackdogs come close and mars hydro have a 1600w(800w mains) but they won't replace a 1000w hps.

 

if the 1000w hid still works i would recommend using an led and the hid together you will recive better resukts then just led and just hid , there are alot of led haters out there . personally i dont have much experence with hid but what iv read about using multy souces of light ex (hid , mh , led , clf ) using all of these in multy spectrums gives sick yeilds

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Check out Weed Dude's thread. These are supposed to be brighter than a 1000w HID. 
http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-grow-journals/1317804-white-light-led-revolution.html/page-11?hl=led+solarspec#entry20871985
 
I recently bought some 150W panels from Amare Technologies that are equivalent to my 600w HPS. Actually the three 150w panels are a little more intense than my 2x600w MH/HPS setup.
 
Hope this helps,
-PG

 

Always hybridize light systems if you can.

But this "has to draw at least the same power" is bullshit. These guys don't know their light science, evidently.


PAR ratings determine how bright the output in a specific bandwidth is, compared to a comparable HID. Most of the light an HID system puts out, like our sun and indoor lightbulbs is yellow to pale blue. That's what OUR eyes use most of.

The plants, however, use near UVA to blue and deep orange to near-IR...about the 380nm to 480nm range and the 640-770nm spectrum.

LEDs emit in the bandwidths their emitters are rated for...in those blue and red spectrum ranges. No wasted green, yellow, pale blue, light orange.

So say you have one with a channel for 720nm red. Since they aren't PERFECT, you're actually delivering light varying between 715 and 725nm. But if the PAR rating on the emitter is 4 times the HID, it means that that emitter puts out four times the intensity of that wavelength compared to an equal "compared wattage" HID .

So when you see "MarsII 1200 watt", it means that the total intensity of light reaching the plants is equal to a 1200 watt HID. But ALL of that light is in useful bands. Downside...without focusing lenses, light intensity fall off occurs faster with an LED, and there are "bandwidth gaps". The plant doesn't USE all the red or blue spectrum equally...but it uses all of it. So if you have a 10 channel LED setup, and each channel only covers a space of about 10nm, then you have 100nm of spectrum covered...out of a total of 250-300nm.

Which more than halves the true effect of your PAR...so people saying "LEDs are three or four times as strong" are both right and wrong. Technically, correct, in the bandwidths supplied. Effectually false, since those unsupplied areas are left unsupplied, cutting total impact down.

But either way...that MARSII "1200 watt" uses 555 watts of electricity per hour of run time....and delivers light in useful wavelengths equal to what you'd get from a 1200 watt HID...with disproportionate heat savings, since LEDs are more efficient (waste less energy turning it to heat instead of light).
But remember, that "1200 watt equivalency" is ONLY in the channels it provides. More channels, less gaps. Less gaps, healthier plants.


LEDs are rapidly becoming THE best way. But aren't there just yet. So if you can, go LED with a low powered HID or a handful of CFLs to "tickle" the less used spans within red and blue the LED misses providing.

 

The mars2 1200 is called that because it uses 5w diods and there are 240 of them. However they only clock them to just over half their rated watts to lengthen their life span.

An LED that uses the same watts as an HPS will be comparable. But a mars2 1200 will not give the growth rates as a 1000w HPS. Where are you getting these ideas from?
 

It uses more than 555 watts and what do you mean by "per hour"? Watts has nothing to do with time. It's constant measurement of energy. Time is irrelevant

 

No you didn't,
and No they aren't

 

Ever heard of a kilowatt hour? A watt rating is how much it electricity it consumes in an hour. A 100 watt incandescent uses 100 watts in an hour. A watt being one joule through 1 ohm of resistance for 1 second to do work, create heat, or create light. If you have a 1,000 watt HID, it adds 24 kWh per day to your electric bill if run 24/0.

For a static calculation, you're right, watts is watts. But since we're NOT dealing with static equations, but electrical consumption, it burns through 555 watts per hour of use. or 1.11kilowatts every 2 hours, adding 13.32kWh to your electric bill per day, if run 24/7.

The MARSII 1200 uses 5 watt diodes...do you know what that means?
 
It doesn't actually mean the diodes use 5 watts. It means the light intensity put out is the equivalent of a 5 watt incandescent (flashlight battery, basically). Diodes are VOLTAGE dependent, not current or resistance. You can pump 100 amps or 1 amp through one...and see the same voltage drop across them every time. The LED lighting systems use LED drivers to convert AC to DC (diodes only allow current to flow one direction), and depending on how they're wired (series, parallel, or multiple combinations) determines how many you can carry on a given power source. A small change in voltage can mean MASSIVE changes in current....either one of which is capable of exceeding the diode's tolerances.


For all purposes, a diode, whether light emitting or not, is essentially a one-way resistor. In a straight DC circuit, you can use one in place of a resistor...and it'll drop the VOLTAGE across the circuit, regardless of what this means for Ohm's law equations for the functional resistance or the current. Problem is, as I just said, if there's too much current, it exceeds the diode's ability to handle it. If there's too much voltage in the circuit, there WILL be too much current. For instance, if you take a diode rated to handle up to 50 amps, with a typical 2 volt drop across it, and feed it 100 volts, then you have a requirement for the diode, which is going to ACT as if it's a resistor. If the current this circuit creates exceeds that 50 amp rating, it burns out. Same diode in a 50 volt circuit? Still drops 2 volts across it. Effectively, you've just "doubled the resistance", and therefor the watts. An LED watt rating is really the current/voltage rating. Exceed either so it has to function as a lower resistance, resulting in higher current, it will exceed it's maximum rating, and burn out. A "5 watt" LED is basically saying it can take 100 volts across it at 20 amps before breaking. And it'll drop the voltage by whatever it's built to, every time....which simply determines how many you can put in a single series circuit. Which tells you how many parallel circuits you must use to branch series circuits off of in order to light the desired number of LEDs that have given tolerances. So a "2 watt" emitter can take 50 in series off a 100 volt circuit. You could put 200 of them on the circuit, done properly...4 parallell circuits each of which is 50 "2 watt" LEDs in series. So long as the current or voltage along any of these series circuits doesn't exceed the ability of the diode to handle it, it's fine. In this example, though, add 10 volts, you burn LEDs out...first one in each series circuit to go cuts off the whole set if they, themselves, aren't paralleled the way christmas lights are. Add 10 amps, same thing. Because FUNCTIONALLY, you forced the diodes to act as if they were greater than 2 watts. But you can take 4 out of each circuit...and do no harm, so long as you maintain voltage and current across each circuit.

So a "5 watt" LED is ACTUALLY figured by the number of emitters lit by the current it requires at the voltage it uses. So say you have 100 diodes on a 100 volt circuit, with a true wattage of 555...do the math. Each diode is actually less than 2 watts. Each diode is ALSO requiring a driver to rectify the current AND "convert current to voltage" via capacitance and induction (that's not what actually happens. What happens is through use of capacitors and induction coils, the current is reduced in the drive to elevate the voltage, so the diode can get what it needs, be that 2 volts or 10).
 
View attachment 149461  
 
 

As you can see by this, what you're trying to claim is in violation of Ohm's Law...the principles under which all electronic calculations are based.

P (watts) = I (current/amps) times V (voltage). That simple. If the unit uses 555 watts, then the "5 watt diodes, 240 of them" violates EVERY principle of Ohm's law. There are electrical components that will change one factor, so they can change another to balance (for instance, use a 10 ohm resistance on a 100 volt current, instead of a 100 ohm, and what you do is increase current from 1 amp to 10 amps...but start working with capacitors and inductors, it starts getting..."odd", since a capacitor is basically a high end resistor until charged in the first few milliseconds, then works as a low end resistor, until current is shut off...then it wants to maintain current, so it "kicks back" the stored charge however long it can to maintain that current).


240 units on 100 volts on a unit that consumes 555 watts is NOT "5 watt diodes" in the sense you're trying to claim. Do the math...doesn't work that way. 100 volts, 555 watts....watts divided by volts gives you 5.55 amps for current. Run the circuits in series-parallel, you can put 100 volts behind each series circuit of diodes. Since your typical diode causes a 2 volt drop across it, each series circuit can legitimately have 20 LEDs on it. 20 LEDs on a 100 volt series circuit is "5 watts", even though diodes aren't measured in watts, technically.

Basically, the voltage drops across the diode according to the current it's taking, up to rated tolerances. So you give it X current at Y voltage, this determines how many volts each diode will "drop" the circuit. Wattage terms are nonsense for them, as it is independent EXCEPT when using it to "relate to" something else. The same LED can actually USE 5 watts or 2 watts by calculation...same diode. Depends on the current in the circuit.

I am grossly simplifying, yes, but for simplicity's sake.

But the end result is, the MARSII 1200 watt may very well have "5 watt diodes, 240 of them"...but it consumes 555 watts of energy every hour...again, watts being joules (units of energy) passing through one ohm of resistance for one second to do work, create light, or create heat. Amps are not energy, they're current. It has no integral value for doing work. Volts are "pressure" for want of a better term. Potential energy. Useless without something to DO with it (use as kinetic energy). Ohms are resistance to doing that work, creating that light, or making that heat. WATTS are what measure the work done, heat created, or light made.

Since it's impossible to reconcile 240 5 watt emitters and 555 watts of consumption, it's your understanding of the concepts that's at fault, here.

BTW...I use HID primarily at the moment...but since being steered to check them out, the reason I use that model as an example is I've been doing the reading on the technical specs. They do, indeed, only consume 555 watts (13.32 kWh/dy on 24/0), they do, indeed, emit a light intensity equal to 1200 watts of HID (approximately 92,000 lux direct light at 2 meters, which is an AT BULB rating for a 1,000 watt HID). But they DON'T produce it in as broad a spectrum.

Basically, the difference between a red laser pointer and a flashlight....which one's brighter, even though they both use the same voltage and current, an older 3 cell Maglite, or a 3 cell laser pointer? They both use the same voltage, near enough (1.6 volts series for the Maglight, 1.4, series, for the laser pointer, so 4.8 volts compared to 4.2 volts). The old Maglite batteries (even the new ones aren't laser LED bright) were .7 amp 4.8 volt 3.36 watt actual. Your laser LED is a 4v drop LED...effectively a "one watt" emitter.

But is the laser LED really "one watt"? Hardly. Dozens of places online to look up how to "increase your wattage" on a pointer...when even then, you're not upping the wattage, you're upping the current, to make the bulb brighter...which, if you do the calculations, makes the emitter functionally higher wattage, even if it isn't truly higher wattage.

 

Wow


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Sorry stoneygal88 for what I am about to do here. GoldGrower insists that what you will see in the following photos is not true.
 
All I did was take a photograph. No lights were harmed in the process.
Viewer's Discretion is Advised
 
In my former veg tent (because I veg with LED now), there used to be 864w of T5HO tubes growing my plants. What you see here is a PPFD meter from Apogee measuring the Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density or the amount of photons within the PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) range which is responsible for plant growth.

 
 
Here is a photo of the LEDs I mentioned earlier. GoldGrower insisted that I take fair measurements from equal distances as in another thread, as I was sharing my initial findings, as my arbitrary measurements from the canopy were not an adequate comparison.
 
These are three SolarSPEC 150w LED panels in a 5x5 space. It covers roughly 2/3rds of the growing area.

 
When I got a hold of this meter I was actually taken back by the readings. The person I borrowed it from couldn't believe it either.
 
I have been growing for many years. My skill as a gardener has improved but the technology of the lights growing the lights in my garden has remained the same. My electric bill has gone up 18% and my bulb replacement expenses are hurting my bottom line. As I was doing  research for a better solution, I encountered WeedDudes's journal. He wasn't the only one who helped me make my decision. DDP had a journal going. Long story short, they gave me the contact info, spoke to Victor, and got my panels. 
 
There are other members on this forum with similar stories and experiences with these new LEDs.
 
I went on to compare them with the stuff I have been growing with for years and here is what I saw. 
 

 
 
This is a PPFD sample under one 600w Eye Hortilux bulb powered by a 600w Quantum Digital Dimmable Ballast.
 

 
This is a PPFD sample under both 600wMH and 600wHPS bulbs. Yes, that is 1200w!


 
 
GoldGrower, 
 
All I am doing here is stating the facts. I can understand where you are coming from. You see, I know there was a time where the world was believed to be flat, and if you sailed in one direction too far, you would fall off. There was also a time where the Earth was believed to be the center of the universe. It was very hard for the simple people of the time to conceive such sophisticated ideas of round planets orbiting the sun. And now, even a small child knows better.
 
I believe as technology progresses, so will world views. There are answers all around us, all you have to do is look.
An open mind is a wonderful thing to see. Especially in other people. 
 
-PG

 

Those "pure white" LEDs or a "full spectrum", in that setup, PG?

 

Out of curiosity what was the distance at which you were the output of the T5s? I didn't see a yard stick


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Measuring*


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Haha, 8"-10". Too close to use a yardstick. The T5s are for sale LOL. The plants just don't get the intensity they need. And, The T5s get warm. Good in the winter time. Some shoots are already an inch away from the tubes. They get good light there I'm sure.
 
Here is a better pic. You can see the reflector in the upper left corner.

 
-PG

 

Got ya


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High, thank you for your in depth look into the wild world of electricity.  I have a nominal understanding of this.
 
My question for you is, and I apologize if you've essentially already answered this, do you feel like the Mars II 1200 is an appropriate replacement for a 1000w HID setup?  I'm planning a 5x5 (4-6 plants) and after fixture, bulb, ballast, and cooling costs, I start to wonder if I would be better off with LED...namely the Mars II 1600 or 1600 model.  Either way I was planning to supplement with the appropriate temp/phase CFLs among the plants.
 
Thanks for your or anyone else's thoughts on this.

 

 
 
The Mars1600 is a decent light for the price, but very inefficient in regards to umol/watt output. It's not even close to a 1000w HID in terms of coverage for a 5x5. It will barely cover a 4x4 due to the inverse square law, and the coverage on the edges will not be on par with a 1k HID. It depends on your budget, because there's much better and more efficient alternatives available with the white spectrum that will grow plants much more efficient compared to the standard red spectrum. 
 
This is a comparison done by another member, DDP, between a Mars1200(560w) vs. SolarSPEC260(260w).  The SolarSPEC generated twice the amount of light at half the wattage, the Mars1600 is only 25% more wattage than the 1200 model.  There's much better alternatives at a little more cost, but with much better quality, price-performance and value in terms of net light and PAR umol/w output.
 
http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-grow-journals/1316222-4x4-led-wild-thai-seed-second-grow.html/page-15

 

 
Sooo...he compared the two lights using a cell phone app.  I myself dismiss his little experiment.  First of all, it was using cell phone apps which I find ridiculous.  Second, it was measuring lux not par or PPFD for that matter.  I have been looking around on the web for LED lights that are rated or reviewed as being better but they cost substantially more money than the Mars lights.  I'm talking about 2 or 3 times the cost.  With the fuel (electricity) savings being only around half or less than that of HID, I would just buy HID as my return on investment would take years.

For me, interest in LED is more toward less maitenance than the efficiency.  The energy costs of HID aren't too bad (~$35/month veg for 1kw HID) for me where I live and my product is for personal consumption so I'm not trying to balance those kind of costs all that much.  If I had a commercial operation, I could certainly see those name brand LEDs paying off in a year or two.  That's why I'm eyeballing the generic brands.
 
If you have a suggestion for make/model of LED that has a cost that is commensurate with the efficiency, I'd love to hear about it.

 

I just now figured, roughly, that after the second year of growing at 2 crops per year (2 month veg, 3 month flower) HID becomes more expensive than the Mars II 1600.

Assumptions are:

A one time $300 1000w HID (iPower) setup plus $100 worth of bulbs (cheapies) and $290 electricity per year.
A one time $600 Mars II 1600 and $145 electricity per year.

HID:  $980 at the end of second year
LED:  $835 at the end of second year
 
Other costs being more or less the same presumably.
 
Thoughts?

 

I have a feeling the LED won't be any good after 2 years(especially cheap Chinese) from what people say they start to burn out. I'm not sure what is in the Mars, but the fact they don't seem to hold up is what is keeping me from getting one.


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I haven't seen those comments with any LEDs so far in my reading.