Abstract: Growing vegetables, flowers and other plants indoors can be an extremely rewarding pastime. For many urban dwellers, growing indoors may be the only option available to them. For others, indoor growing allows more control over the myriad factors that contribute to healthy plants.
When choosing a growth light system, technology is critical. You want full-spectrum lighting that doesn’t put out a lot of heat and consumes energy efficiently. LED lighting fits the bill perfectly.
LED panels are considerably more efficient than the most popular type of indoor grow lights, HIDs or High-Intensity Discharge lights. They beat out fluorescent systems as well. LED lights convert more electricity to light and less to heat. That means they don’t require expensive cooling systems.
By nearly every metric, LED lights are the best choice for indoor growing, but they are more expensive. Which is why you should purchase your lights from Chinese manufacturers. There are a number of highly-reputable Chinese firms producing premium quality lights at a considerable discount compared to other vendors.
By the end of this article, you’ll have a full understanding of the benefits of LED lights for indoor plant growth and will appreciate your purchasing options.
To begin, let’s compare an LED growth light system to other common lighting types to see exactly why LED is better.
LED vs. HID Lights
HID bulbs were the most common type of grow light before LEDs rose to prominence. There are a number of different HID lamp types, including high-pressure sodium (HPS), metal halide (MH), dual arc and conversion bulbs. Each has different strengths and weaknesses, but LED lights are better than all of them.
HIDs are arc lamps. Instead of using electricity to heat a filament until it glows like incandescent or halogen lamps, HID arc lamps create a high-intensity electrical arc between two tungsten electrodes.
The electrodes are contained within a translucent housing, surrounded by a noble gas. The gas facilitates the initial arc. Arc lighting in general is more efficient than either incandescent and halogen lights, as well as fluorescent lights.
LED or light-emitting diode lights use entirely different technology. LEDs are semiconductor lights. There is no electrical arc, and nothing is heated wastefully. Instead, the units contain a special semiconductor material that gives off light when electricity flows through it. The process converts electricity to light more efficiently than HID lights.
Light Quality
HID bulbs have been popular because they give off a light spectrum very similar to sunlight. And they have a higher lumen per watt rating than fluorescent bulbs, the previous king of indoor growing.
LED growth light panels are even better. They offer extremely specific light spectrums. And because the bulbs are so small, lighting enclosures will include a mixture of different LEDs with different color temperatures. This allows for precise tuning of the spectrum. Growers can set a specific color temperature for vegetative growth and then change it when they want to promote flowering.
To do this with HID bulbs you have to start with the MH variety for vegetative growth and then switch to HPS bulbs later in the growing cycle. Because specific types of HID bulbs require specific ballasts, changing bulbs means having two types of ballasts as well.
Alternatively, you can use dual-arc bulbs, essentially an HPS and MH bulb in one, but these make tradeoffs. You might also invest in conversion bulbs which can share a ballast or a switchable ballast which can use both types of bulbs. But overall, LEDs work better and are far less complicated.
Heat Output
LED lights also give off very little heat — they offer half the heat output of comparable HID bulbs. At high wattages, the excessive heat from an HPS growth light requires external cooling systems to avoid scorching plants. The cost of these cooling systems must be included in the cost of your lights, which makes LED lighting even more attractive.
By comparison, high output LED systems come with integrated cooling fans built-in. This is all the cooling they need. These smaller, onboard systems use far less power than large, standalone cooling systems.
Power Consumption and Bulb Life
LED light enclosures consume about half the power that HID bulbs require to emit a comparable amount of light. This helps offset LED’s higher upfront costs. LEDs also maintain their color temperature values longer. Both HID and LED panels lose output brightness as they age, but this process takes much longer in LEDs.
HPS HID bulbs generally last between 12 and 18 months. MH HID bulbs require changing more frequently, roughly every 6 to 10 months. LED fixtures, by comparison, are rated for 50,000 hours of use. Assuming the lamps run for 18 hours a day, this translates to a lifespan of almost 7 and a half years. When you amortize LED’s higher upfront costs over their much longer lifespan, they’re no longer the most expensive option.
LED vs. Fluorescent Lights
Prior to the development of HIDs, fluorescents were the most popular growth light on the market. Compared to other options available at the time, fluorescents gave off very little heat and provided a full-spectrum light that was good for both vegetative growth and flowering.
However, the light output of fluorescents is fairly weak. This made them better for seedlings, and early plant growth. For larger plants more lights were required, which caused a spike in electricity use. HID lights solved the light output problems but added extra heat.
LED enclosures solve both of these problems. LEDs give off a powerful, bright, high-quality light that’s well-suited to all growing applications. LEDs do give off a bit more heat the fluorescent bulbs, but because they’re so efficient, you need fewer of them. Overall this means the heat output is lower, and you can hang them further away from your plants, further protecting them from accidental overheating. Because they run cool, you can also bring them in closer to maximize light usage.
Efficiency
A 1000-watt T5 fluorescent grow tube has the equivalent light output of a 500-watt LED enclosure. That means LEDs consume half as much energy as T5 fluorescent bulbs for the same light output.
Fluorescent growth light tubes are considerably less expensive than LED systems. However, some of the cost savings are eaten up by increased power usage. In a small growing setup the increased energy costs are palatable but in a larger-scale operation, a doubling of energy requirements can be costly indeed.
Light Quality
Fluorescent bulbs give off less light than LED enclosures per joule of energy. Their light is less vibrant and doesn’t penetrate dense foliage as well. However, they’re available in a number of configurations from cool to warm and full-spectrum.
LED growth light panels match fluorescent’s capabilities and then improve on them. They’re adjustable. Growers can set specific color temperatures and sculpt the frequencies of light to match precise plant needs. They can be adapted to specific growing phases, recreate the color spectrum of different parts of the world during different seasons and can be tailored to the specific plant being grown.
They’re more expensive, but you get more value for the cost.
Longevity
LEDs are a solid-state lamp. They don’t use fragile glass bulbs and they aren’t filled with gas that can leak. They’re solid semiconductors attached to specialized electrical chips. As such, they’re not nearly as susceptible to accidental breakage as fluorescent bulbs.
Fluorescents are large tubes made of thin glass. Breakage is common, which is messy, dangerous and a waste of money.
In terms of bulb life generally, CFLs or compact fluorescent lights, the smaller of the two common fluorescent configurations, last for about 8,000 hours. T5 fluorescent grow tubes last a bit longer, at 10,000 hours. LEDs last five times longer, at 50,000 hours. This considerably longer life further defrays the higher upfront cost for LED enclosures.
Environmental Considerations
Fluorescent bulbs contain mercury vapor. Mercury is a noted environmental toxin, which makes the disposal of fluorescent bulbs problematic. LEDs are inert solids. Thus, they can be disposed of without any risk to the environment.
Other Benefits of LED Growth Light Systems
Individual LED lights are very small, about the size of a pea. To build a large grow enclosure, dozens of individual LEDs are networked together. This allows a nearly infinite variety of design shapes and sizes. Growth light configurations include strips, large squares, rectangular panels and circular enclosures. Large scale growers can even have custom installations designed to fit exacting grow specifications.
Depending on your needs you can purchase large, industrial-size panels or small strips on flexible bases for use with individual plants. LEDs are far more flexible than any other light option on the market.
Well-designed enclosures take advantage of LED lighting’s distributed design to increase their lifespan. You can lose or damage an individual LED without affecting the rest of the array. If a fluorescent or HID bulb breaks, its entire light output is lost. If you lose a single LED, you only lose the small amount of light it contributes. The rest of the panel’s light output is maintained at full brightness.
Unlike other growth light systems, individual LEDs have integrated heat sinks that pull heat from the light and dissipate it away from your plants. This increases the life of the unit. Other light types can be damaged if they aren’t cooled properly and are allowed to overheat.
The lowered heat output of an LED bank also means that the lights can be placed closer to the tops of the plants without risking scorching. The closer your lights are to your plants, the more of the light falls on leaf surfaces, leading to more efficient light use. Hotter lights must be placed further away, leading to greater light leakage.
Once You Include All Relevant Benefits, LEDs Are the Most Affordable Option
If you’re looking at ticket price alone, LED growth light banks are the most expensive type of lamp for indoor growers. However, there are a number of factors that mitigate this cost. In the end, LEDs are actually the least expensive light available, over the entire course of the useable life.
The lights use less power than other types, leading to lower operating costs. This saves money over the life of the unit.
They also run cooler than other light technologies, relative to the amount of power they pull, which means they don’t require external cooling systems. These cooling systems are expensive to purchase and use extra power, greatly boosting the cost of non-LED lighting systems, rendering them less competitive.
Finally, LED lights last significantly longer than every other option available — years longer in fact. Other light types that hit their end of life sooner must be replaced, adding to their total cost. By the time you factor in the energy savings, cooling savings and the extended life of LED growth light enclosures, the cost per month is less than any other lighting type.
But for some, the higher upfront cost can make it difficult to purchase needed lights, regardless of the fact that they cost less than other types over their life. For these people, anyone looking for the best value in lighting, it makes sense to purchase LED lighting from China.
Reputable Chinese lighting manufacturers build products that are as good, if not better than comparable producers in other countries. They take advantage of economies of scale, an affordable labor supply and a well-entrenched industrial infrastructure to manufacture a wide range of LED lighting products for well below comparable market prices.
When considering your growth light options, you would do well to include Chinese producers in your comparison shopping.
LEDs Are the Best Choice For Indoor Growers
There’s simply no comparison. LED lights last longer, use less energy, run cooler and produce an adjustable light spectrum that gives growers unparalleled control over their growing parameters.
If you haven’t yet considered LED growth light systems, you should move them to the top of your list. They are quickly replacing HIDs as the most popular lighting option on the market. Your grow room will benefit, your plants will thank you.
