# High Pressure Sodium - Metal Halide versus LED grow system



## 420 4 fun (Dec 9, 2008)

HPS/MH system

3000 watts flower (3 HPS)
12 h/day = 36kwh

500 watts veg/mom/babies (400MH, Flouros)
18 h/day = 9kwh

another 1000 watts for fans, A/C and such
15 h/day = 15kwh

4500 watts total 

Electrical usage is 60kwh/day at a lower rate per day of .07 per kwh = $4.20/day of power to run a very nice setup
Some places in the USA charge a lot more for power, for instance if it is .15/kwh the daily cost would be $9.00/day

yearly costs are 
$1533 @ .07kwh per year
$3300 @ .15kwh per year


Theoretically for the LEDs based on the data of efficient PAR watts, no wasted light or by-product heat, last for 15 years without changing bulbs or ballasts, use 50-75% less electricity.

YOUR GOAL is:

To make the system below YIELD equivalent harvested fruit that the HPS/MH system above consistently does ->
except with LED as the source of all lighting.

Here is the theoretical LED system:

Five 300 watt LED panels for flower (1500 watts)
12 h/day = 18kwh

One 200 watt for mother plants
One 100 watt for clones
18 h/day = 5.4kwh

No a/c

No dehumidifier

less electricity consumption 

add another 700watts for misc equipment just to be sure (I think 700w is over kill, probably only need another 300-400 watts for misc)
15 h/day = 10.5

2500watts total

Electrical usage is 33.9kwh/day at a lower rate per day of .07 per kwh = $2.37/day of power to run an LED setup
@ 0.15/kwh the daily cost would be $5.09/day

yearly costs for the lower power consuming LED system are 
$865 @ .07kwh per year
$1856 @ .15kwh per year

COMPARE WITH THE HPS/MH SYSTEM
yearly costs are 
$1533 @ .07kwh per year
$3300 @ .15kwh per year

If the above LED system is yielding the same amount of harvested fruit per cycle as the HPS/MH system - consistently

Why wouldnt one initially invest more and add another 2000 watts of High power LED to their garden and more than DOUBLE THE YIELD every time, and still only be using the same amount of power as the 4500 watt HPS/MH system. 

I think if this was the case, 2-3 cycles later, all the high priced equipment would be paid for by the extra profits.


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## nourdmrolnmt1 (Dec 9, 2008)

LED will NOT penetrate anything...

the best alternative to HPS/MH lights is CMH, it has the best light spectrum available.


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## Old in the Way (Dec 9, 2008)

LED technology really isn't anywhere close to performing at the level of HID lights--maybe in a few years.....

Dude man is right it won't penetrate like the others........


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## Boneman (Dec 9, 2008)

Faaaghetaboutit....LED's aint gonna produce JACK! compared to hps.


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## 420 4 fun (Dec 9, 2008)

nourdmrolnmt1 said:


> LED will NOT penetrate anything...
> 
> the best alternative to HPS/MH lights is CMH, it has the best light spectrum available.


Hi nourdmrolnmt1,

This is why the person with the high power LED system would grow in a stadium, vertical or a scrog setup. To evenly distrbute the light over all of the growing shoots instead of the typical flat garden with the lights only above, focussing only on the top cola.

Canopy would not be an issue with scrog or stadium or vertical.

So far, that is all I have seen, is people trying it flat. That is their mistake and is what is keeping the development of LED at bay.

I don't have the resources/$$ to try this thoery, but I do think it is a sound one.

I know we will get alot of opinions from the conventional HPS growers, without any literature to back up what they are saying other than "I read it somewhere on the internet"

Lets hear from you people who are already experimenting with LED's


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## Old in the Way (Dec 9, 2008)

420 4 fun said:


> Hi nourdmrolnmt1,
> 
> 
> Lets hear from you people who are already experimenting with LED's



There is a reason we don't hear from anybody successfully employing led lights in flower....its...ughh....ughhh cause there isn't anybody....right, right............thats why there are no posts singing their praises.....

I "didn't" hear it on the internet


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## 420 4 fun (Dec 9, 2008)

Old in the Way said:


> There is a reason we don't hear from anybody successfully employing led lights in flower....its...ughh....ughhh cause there isn't anybody....right, right............thats why there are no posts singing their praises.....
> 
> I "didn't" hear it on the internet


Seems like this is an already judged and juried topic?

Well, thats all fine and dandy, you guys can keep driving your classic Chevy's, Fords and Dodges, even though they have changed their technology over the years and adapted to compete with Honda/Accura, Nissan/Infinity.

Meanwhile I'll be trying to innovate, improve, learn, be dynamic etc.

alot of the top grows in this forum, the technology and know how has been around for years, it is tried tested and true, 

As will be LED in a few years, think of it as being a pioneer. 

If you don't want to be a pioneer and can only offer negative feedback and closed minded comments, thats ok, we can just sift through that crap and continue along.

I saw your show, Old in the way, and its not as impressive as it could be with all of the knowledge available here in this forum.

I did all these systems 5-15 years ago and produced more than many ppl do these days. 

Omega, the cage, the coliseum, tables, 3 footers, aero, nft, I did it all.

Now I want to try LED and I am looking for positive movement, not negative, so thanks for your comments, but I heard them all in the last few months, 

Im looking for a new breed of comments, I think this is the place to find these types of people, Lurking somewhere.

There are alot of American 420 farmers out there that are growing with a single 250, 400 or 600 
Not wanting to go any bigger for fears of being arrested or robbed.

How does law enforcement or your neighbors figure out that you are growing?

Cops may discover you from heat signatures,

Neighbors can take a look at your power meter spinning like a circular saw or track you down from the smell becuase you have to vent your heat and humidity out.

LED has its pros,

Less power consumption means less milage on the power meter.

Less heat equals less humidity equals less foggy windows equals less fans equals no need to vent out smelly air equals no need for A/C and alot more.

So, back to the original thesis

"To find a way to apply new technology to use less wattage and at the same time to yield just as much as a conventional system that is using more wattage"


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## HydroBandits (Dec 9, 2008)

Id love to see some do a legit LED grow. i've watched a youtube comparison of LED vs HPS and the hps of course out produced. but like 420 is suggesting, there needs to be unconventional methods used to best suit the LEDs. Such as stadium grows, just an example. 

Idk where im goig with this but i think LED could be a sweet asset to growers alike. and I dont have the $$ to experiment but i will rep the shit out of someone who does.


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## jesus420 (Dec 9, 2008)

dude if you're willing to spend the $$ i'm willing to be a patient observer.


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## 420 4 fun (Dec 9, 2008)

Thanks for the positive motivation guys!!

There are 2 actives LED threads in RIU that I am gleefully following.
They are both lower wattage shows, but I am still anxiously watching to learn and help in any way that I can.

Here is one of them, Kudos to potpimp

If you run across any experiments, please post or PM me the link.

Thanks
https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/136182-potpimps-white-widow-grow.html


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## nourdmrolnmt1 (Dec 9, 2008)

just give him time to discover, just like you will, that LED are not useful for flowerng, MAYBE veg,


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## EZD11 (Dec 9, 2008)

I have a 400 LED blue/red mixed 70/30 that i only apply to my flowering process and ive noticed that i get pistels within 3-5 days instead of my regular 9-15 days and ive been running the same system for a few years now ill take a pic in the morning and throw it up.....on that note i would say iam PRO LED ...lol.


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## Jonus (Dec 10, 2008)

The prob with LED tech is lumens per square foot. 

What is particular with LED lamps is square, flat lamps, that are being produced, and larger and larger areas are being covered. Still lacking in real big bud creating lumen power though. But you get a very even distribution of lumens across the width of the lamp, and also a consistant lumens per square foot down to just over a foot below the lamp making it a top vegging light.

But if you were determined to use LEDs to bud with, this would be probably one of the best ways to do it to get a bigger yield than the usually spindly or average size buds Ive seen and grown myself under LEDs.

Scrog, stretch, bend, snip top bud, do whatever possible to keep your plants at just over a foot high, with as wide and FLAT a canopy as possible.

The next bit is not highly recommended because the product is getting mixed reviews due to some concerns about hormone manipulation. But is optional to get maximum bud from lack of lumen budding lights.

Use a product called Sudden Impact by Yield Masta. It is used to hormonially switch the plant into flowering, but more importantly to slow then stop the growth of the main stem, and double the flowering sites. So once your plant gets to the height you want it stopped at (for LEDs that is just over a foot), use that.

That way the end result will be lots and lots of budding sites all at the same height covering a wide area for which your LED lamps cover without raising them to ridiculous heights.

The buds will still be small due to the LEDs lack of lumens per square foot, but there will be twice as many buds in your canopy than normal all receiving equal amounts of LED light. Sudden Impact will take care of the stretch issue too, and help thicken up the stems.

The buds sizes will obviously be nothing you want to send through to HighTimes magazine but you will at least get a decent yield from your plants by getting twice as many small buds than normal.

I have used Sudden Impact on several plants that got away on me, stops the growth of main stem within days. Budding sites are just nothing short of insane!


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## stonersrbetter! (Dec 10, 2008)

i almost did a pure led grow. it was a small set up with four plants. i flowered them at a foot. they grew to two feet when harvested. on the last week of flowering i threw in cfls hoping it would help. the nugs were very small. i got an 8th of each plant. i like the idea of leds but they defn stil need some tweakin.


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## 420 4 fun (Dec 10, 2008)

Hi stonersrbetter,

Welcome,

Thanks for your input, can you give us more information about your show?

Wattage, flat, scrog, nutes, etc.

Thanks,

It will all help us to learn and improve the way we work with and use LEDs

Peace


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## Jonus (Dec 10, 2008)

The one bud I did with my LED gave me 1 oz per plant. Had I used the idea I posted above, well, it would have been more, prob 1.75 oz per plant at the least. Is why I bud under HPS's .


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## 420 4 fun (Dec 10, 2008)

Hi Jonus,

Were they big plants? if you were not happy with an O per plant, they musta been big suckas.

Do you mind to tell us the details of the show?

Peace


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## Jonus (Dec 10, 2008)

> Were they big plants? if you were not happy with an O per plant, they musta been big suckas.


End result was about 3 foot plants. Under HIDs I get a regular 3 oz per plant in 15 litre pots. So growing plants from start to finish, 12 weeks and getting 1 oz each is a lot of time for little yeild.



> Do you mind to tell us the details of the show?


Well ok but i would prefer to show photos of the grow rather than just talk about it. And this is all coming from memory cause it was 6 months ago.

- Grow space: 600mm x 800mm wall closet lined with Mylar to keep in the heat. 100mm Carbon filter with inline fan. One oscillating fan.
- Strain: Afgani cloned from mother
- Lighting: LED array - 7 x 272 5mm LED boards (1904 LEDs) running at 12volts and 112 watts. 75% blue, 25% red spectrum.
- Nutrients: Canna Terra Range
- Medium: soiless potting mix

- Grow details: Grew three clones for 14 days in Canna Rhizotonic under LED on an 18/6 light cycle till the clones were bushy and fluffy white roots hanging out the bottom like crazy. Vegged 18/6 under LED for a week and a half then topped them, vegged for another week till each plant was just on or over a foot high. No problems there.

- Bloom details: 12/12 switch and changed to Canna Flores and Bio Boost. Added in 4 more panels I had built that were 75% red, 25% blue adding another 64 watts into the mix. 

This caused too much of a draw on my power supply almost cooking the thing, so had to take them out of the loop and buy another supply just for them (12v circuits are high in current).

By the time week two came it was evident these plants were going to stretch a little so I kept the LED lamp as close to the tops as possible and moved branches around and tied a few back to allow light through the canopy.

By week four I realised I should have only grown 2 plants under that light as they were fine at 1 foot, but now they were now fighting for light intensity and outgrowing the premium LED lighted area so i had to raise the light slightly to cover all the outer leaves. I started them on a course of PK13-14 which is a potassium/phosporous boost product from Canna. Fed them that for a week.

Week five I noticed the buds started to fatten and things looked promising. Could see lots of resin building, hopes went up that if they carried on at that rate that this could be a successful grow.

Week 6 and 7 were disappointing with little extra swelling of bud and by the end of week 7 I started the flush for the last week, flushing with Rhizotonic, Cannazym, Bio Boost and of course water.

Week 8: The usual fattening of bud that we all experience in the last 2 weeks didnt happen, instead the plants were now at more or less 3 feet high and I had tied them in all directions to try and get light on as much of the budded, fan leaved area as possible. I could have gone to week nine but by that time I just wanted them out of there as my new batch of clones of my Affy mother were gagging for vegging.

Anomalies: Leaves ended up a more bluish color vs the usual deep green. This is how I know if someone has truly budded their plants under LEDs from start to finish, and why in the past on here I have stated my doubts at several growers claims that they have completed their grows without adding extra white lighting.

Nodes were tight as I have ever seen in the first foot of growth down to the level in which LED lumenosity starts to drop off. Once they got over a foot high they began to reach. Not for the lack of heat. Using 12v LED lighting is a hot experience. The power pack alone was enough of a heater to keep the grow room at 25c.

End result: 3 dried oz. Buds were hard and small, hard probably due to BioBoost more than the light. High was average.

As mentioned in my previous post, the only way I can think of that could have improved the yield in theory other than just growing the 2 plants under the light, was using Yield Masta - Sudden Impact to double the budding sites therefore double the yield of small buds.

Power used: LED light used 180kW across the whole grow.


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## stonersrbetter! (Dec 11, 2008)

this guy did more led than me. i had a glow panel 45. in a 3x3 room

i vegged for 2 weeks. i had two different trains. shiva skunk and pineaple punch.

the pineaples streched like crazy. i kept the lights less than 6 inches away and they still stretched.
my veg nutes were ednas best fish emulsion, and seaweed extract with kelp. both 100% organic.

i flowered for nine weeks hoping that last week would fatten the buds but never did.

i did the same as the person above by tying down the plant to get good light distribution but it didn't help
my flower nutes were tiger bloom, the seaweed extract and top max by biobizz.

i grew in a soil mix of 2/3 ednas best soil and 1/3 fyto cell.
they were in one and a half gallon buckets that were tall and thin so they coould all fit under the light.

on the last two weeks of flowering i added sugar into the water mix to sweeten the buds. (it worked too)

my final result was a half ounce off of four plants that were about 1ft nd a half each.

this is why i am now using t5 4ft 4bulb for veg and two 150w hps for flowering


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## 420 4 fun (Dec 13, 2008)

Hi Jonus,

Would you post some pics of your LED setup that you tested and the results of the harvest?

Does anyone know, technically speaking, what is, if there even is, the difference between commercially made UFO, 300watt, Procryons etc.. and a quality XLamp® XR-C LEDs home made LED array.

I'll bet it would be a costly project, but *WHAT IF* it gets us closer to the goal of the 1st post of this thread. What if this new XLamp® XR-C LEDs can yield 2 grams/watt of decent tight bud.......................?

CREE Press release

Cree Achieves 161 Lumens per Watt from a High-Power LED 
_High-performance R&D chip and package combine for record-setting efficacy_

DURHAM, N.C., NOVEMBER 19, 2008  Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE), a leader in LED lighting, announces it has achieved industry-best reported R&D results of 161 lumens per watt for a white power LED.

These results demonstrate Crees continued commitment to deliver industry-leading performance through a constant focus on innovation and R&D. Crees tests confirmed that the 1mm x 1mm LED produced 173 lumens of light output and achieved 161 lumens per watt efficacy at a color temperature of 4689K. The tests were conducted under standard LED test conditions at a drive current of 350mA, at room temperature. 

Cree is inventing, commercializing and delivering LED lighting innovations that aim to obsolete the energy-inefficient light bulb, said John Edmond, Cree co-founder and director of advanced optoelectronics. Our advances in brightness and efficacy come from a focus on end-to-end innovation that can enable LED lighting to address growing numbers of lighting applications while saving energy, saving money and helping to protect the environment.

While this level of performance is not yet available in production LEDs, Cree continues to ship millions of 100+ lumen lighting-class XLamp® LEDs.

*About Cree*
Cree is leading the LED lighting revolution and setting the stage to obsolete the incandescent light bulb through the use of energy-efficient, environmentally friendly LED lighting. Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, LED lighting solutions, and semiconductor solutions for wireless and power applications.

Crees product families include recessed LED down lights, blue and green LED chips, high-brightness LEDs, lighting-class power LEDs, power-switching devices and radio-frequency/wireless devices. Cree solutions are driving improvements in applications such as general illumination, backlighting, electronic signs and signals, variable-speed motors, and wireless communications.

This press release contains forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. Actual results may differ materially due to a number of factors, such as the risk we may be unable to develop and release commercial products with performance ratings comparable to the development results described above; the risk we may be unable to manufacture products with sufficiently low cost to offer them at competitive prices or with acceptable margins; the rapid development of new technology and competing products that may impair demand or render our products obsolete; the potential lack of customer acceptance for the products; variations in demand for Cree's products and its customers' products; and other factors discussed in Crees filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 29, 2008, and subsequent filings.


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## Jonus (Dec 13, 2008)

There were no photos of that particular grow.
Here is a pic of the light, it was 7 boards wired together and layed out in a sort of constantiner shape.







Results were as stated already, a dried oz per plant.

Just a point about Cree Xlamps and the Procyon, not sure if you know this but the Procyon is an array of 53 Cree XLamp LEDs. But theyre probably not the newest of the Cree range.

The main issue that LEDs have struggled to deal with, as is the issue with any lamp, is lumens per square foot of light intensity. There are two reasons why we need lots of lumens for big bud production, one is the obvious, plants convert light into food, and the second is light intensity triggers a reaction in plants to protect themselves against that intensity, and that is resin production,

The biggest issue with working out grams is actually having growers complete their LED grows without supplimenting their grow with other lighting. To do this the issue of lumens per square foot needs to be firstly addressed.

Lumens per square foot is a subject most LED producers avoid because they know their product doesnt cut it in the foot candle dept. So the buyers thoughts are focussed on things like percentage of light spectrum, overall lumens, megacandela ratings etc etc. Most of those things do not have any bearing on budding weed.

Has anyone been able to calculate the lumens per square foot for either the UFO or the Procyon?


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## tusseltussel (Dec 13, 2008)

420 4 fun said:


> HPS/MH system
> 
> 3000 watts flower (3 HPS)
> 12 h/day = 36kwh
> ...


how do you put 3000 watts of hps\mh against 1500 watts led???? not much of an experiment if the numbers arnt the same, or did i miss somthin, whats the lumen output


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## smppro (Dec 13, 2008)

The main problem is that people believe what they read about 90watts of LED producing the same as 400 hps when it doesnt. Can they produce bud? Yes Are they the future? Yes Are they going to cost more than hps? Yes Are you going to need atleast as many LED watts as you do HID watts? Yes It seems like all your info is based of what the people selling the LEDs are saying, which so far has proven to be untrue. Now im not trying to be negative, i think LEDS are the future but your not showing us anything new yet. I wish you luck though 

I think you should watch this and start your research from here, although i do hear the ufo doesnt use the best LEDS out right now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CtROw3uiVg
They did out veg the MH though which was impressive


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## Jonus (Dec 13, 2008)

The problem again is not the watts. You could have 20,000 watts of LEDs and you will still not get the same bud size as a 1000 watt HPS. Now before everyone jumps on my ass, let me clarify...again.

The difference between 100 watts of LED and 1000 watts of LED is the area it covers. 

Example: You have a 600 watt HPS outputting a total of 95,000 lumen's running in your 6' x 3' grow space giving you 5277 lumen's per square foot, and replace it with a 1000 watt HPS which is 145000 lumen's or 8055 lumen's per square foot of the same size grow area, it occupies the same space but the lumen's go through the roof.

The restriction with LEDs at this time is that you cannot order up a 1000 watt UFO LED to replace your 90 watt UFO. In order to get 1000 watts of UFO LED light you would need to purchase another 11 UFOs, or a lamp with the amount of LEDs that would match 11 times the number of LEDs in the UFO. Hung side by side, while there would be some overlap of light from each UFO, that would not increase the lumen's per square foot by much more than say another 100 lumen's per square foot.

Now according to most websites advertising the UFO, its total output in lumen's is 3650. In the same grow space of 6' x 3' you would be getting 202 lumens per square foot.

You would need 24 of them jammed side by side in a 6 x 4 matrix in that same grow space to output the same amount of lumens per square foot as 1 x 600 watt HPS or 39 UFOs to match the lumens per square foot of a 1000 watt HPS in the same grow space.

The only way I can think that these numbers are wrong would be if all the manufacturer websites had the wrong lumen rating down. 3650 lumens is 40 lumens per 1 watt LED (90 in total).


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## bruce78 (Jan 25, 2009)

What if they made 10watt LED bulbs? Will that be a solution?...


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## giantart (Jan 27, 2009)

LED's produce Laser light - thats why it just don't work!!!


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## GrowGreenGreen (Mar 7, 2009)

giantart said:


> LED's produce Laser light - thats why it just don't work!!!



That's just silly!

Anyone using Lumens in a discussion about LEDs needs to do the homework reading first.

Lights don't emit Lumens they emit photons, the rate at which an LED emits them is what we call the photon flux, measured in mols or Einsteins.

And lasers operate much differently than LEDs.


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## smppro (Mar 8, 2009)

giantart said:


> LED's produce Laser light - thats why it just don't work!!!


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