Quick Follow Up:
A colored LED has a specific light wavelength, such as a blue at 630nm (nanometers). But when it comes to white LED's, I'm running into trouble customizing my own light panel.
White LED's are rated in Kelvin. Unless I've made a mistake, Kelvin is the *average* color temperature . . . and unless you have a SPECIFIC Light Spectrum Graph for a SPECIFIC white light, you'll have only a ballpark guess of what wavelengths are being hit the hardest by that specific white light.
For example, a 5,000-10,000K LED means that the average color temperature is in the lower wavelengths (the blues), while a 1,000-3,000k would be more composed of long wavelength (the reds). But without a light meter that can test various wavelengths, we'd have very little idea whether a specific white light is hitting the optimal lengths.
Consequently, the claim in my original post about the efficiency of white LED's would be easy to test, if you had the right type of light meter -- which is probably HUGELY expensive.
It's about a billion-to-one, but does anyone have a light meter capable of measuring specific wavelengths? If so, I'd love to send you some white LED's and have you test them and post the results for the folks who are interested in LED grow lighting.
BTW, please correct any mistakes I've made!
Thanks,
~jessie