selectable switch ?

The question I have is on my RW-75 Area51 lights as well as the ProGrow 180 that I replaced have "selectable" switching that allows the user to turn on some of the leds.

I understand that it is intended for Veg and flower.

The PG180 has a sticker that says Veg over one switch and Flower over the other switch(which by the way on my unit the switches were mislabeled).

The RW-75 says 50 watt veg and 77.5 watts flower.

The question, is there really an advantage to turning off some of the leds at ANY time in my plants life??

Sure there is. 27.5 watts power saving advantage!
Don't know the real answer Strax, but my guess would be no. But then I vegged under 400w hps, and I may be an idiot or a genius.

Someone else maybe fran jan or supra was talking about just how little watts plants need to veg so maybe saving a few buck over a year by turning it off isnt a bad thing..

Hopefully who ever said it will pop into this thread

It's situational if you ask me. If you're using it for clones or Mom's then why not save the wattage. Or you're going to flower in a smallish container, then you don't want your plant to get root-bound before flowering. Or maybe you're waiting for some bigass plant to finish in your flowering tent. But if you're dropping a seed in a 5 gallon+ size pot, then the moment's the seedling's established, you might as well run it full blast, like PSU is going to tell you . I got 2x Hans panels and the only time I used the switches on them was to see if they worked. Haven't moved it off flowering mode since.

And IMHO all HO panels should come with dimmers too. Helps with heat for some and for those who are more vertically challenged .

And sorry Spaz I don't pop. Not even for the king of it. Oh shit, I just did, didn't I? Fuck.

Thanks FranJan, the new "king of pop"

I have several panels w/switches and like the switch options mainly for flexibility. Of course the savings when doing clones/seeds/vegging are a bonus and obvious. I've been running them for various things, a couple for 9-10 months.

Flexibility example:
Small 2x2x4' tent for seedlings/clones, I would typically use a 150W panel, veg only switch pulling 60W actual and for a few seedlings/clones this works great. But, right now, with a bigger flower room I need to feed, some 12/12 seeds I want, plus a couple of clones I'm preparing for outdoor. I've filled my 2x2x4' tent wall-to-wall with 16 1Gal pots, a mix of seedlings and clones. The 150W, even at full tilt (100W actual) just wouldn't cover the tent area well enough, the spread of the small panel wouldn't provide much light to the corners. So, I put a larger panel (300W, pulling 125W on veg-switch only) in my clone/seedling tent, run it on veg-only and still maintain the humidity/temps I want in there. At full blast pulling about 200W the heat becomes a problem, and reduces my humidity too low for seedlings/clones.

Other than that, if you put the panel high enough at seedling/clone stages you can run them full blast and won't hurt anything, sounds like most folks are doing that with no issues.

I had read a paper a while back (I need to keep references to these papers, can't find it!!) suggesting that too much far red (typically turned on when you flip the Bloom switch), during early development of seedlings/clones could be detrimental. But quite frankly it sounded more like an opinion and reason to get some funding for a study, no data was provided in that paper to convince me that it was fact. Perhaps someone else can chime in on this subject if they've come across any similar articles.

i like full spectrum on all the time. I.E. both switch's on. imo you miss a lot when you just have red or blue. full throttle all the time just lift it up higher