Just for fun discussion : do any grow lights outperform the sun?

I googled but couldn’t get a direct answer.

Well folks? Do any man made lights do a better job than the sun?

Say you lived in a place with ideal outdoor conditions (not just environmental but political) what would make you want to grow inside?

No.

That's been the goal of bulb makers for some time.....Copy the sun's complete spectrum..

So far, and will be for quite some time yet, not able to do so.

The advantages of an indoor grow room is more control of the environment, as outdoors can be more susceptible to bugs/insects, diseases , animals (deers/rabbits) and of course the biggest threat of all are the thieves

But with all that aside, you can't beat the sunshine

Fullscan19 said:

I googled but couldn’t get a direct answer.

Well folks? Do any man made lights do a better job than the sun?

Say you lived in a place with ideal outdoor conditions (not just environmental but political) what would make you want to grow inside?

Click to expand...

In those conditions i'd make a transparent hoop house and enjoy my free FULL SPECTRUM 1 billion watt sunlight. Indoor growing provides more environmental control.

Also, "ideal conditions" depends on the crop... If i was in Jamaica, i'd grow weed, but i'd probably have some trouble growing blueberries outside...

Edit: Forgot to add: Outside you can't control conditions such as clouds and rain... Many crops use supplemental lighting within transparent greenhouses to deal with that.

Sunlight provides roughly 1050 watts per square metre, at approximately 98 000 lumens.
But as stated above, we can't match the spectrum....yet.
The most powerful lights I've seen so far are the CMH, the 315w being the most common.
So to approach the power of natural sunlight, I'd need at least 10 x 315w CMH lamps in my 4x8 tent.
That's around 30A. That would cost (depending on light cycle) $7 -$10 a day. That's about $1,200 a grow just for light.

To beat sunlight on sheer power and lumens, I'd say it doable, just not practicable.

And again, as stated above. Growing indoors because of pests, weather, poachers, winter.

Even if you could duplicate the spectrum and intensity of sunlight, you cant duplicate penetration. A 3" seedling and the top of a 20 foot tree growing next to each other will receive nearly the exact same intensity of sunlight. A great advantage thats pretty hard to duplicate.

im pretty sure i'll be wanting to make it a little more powerful than the sun and increase Co2 to unnatural levels and be called a decent indoor grower.
like the point of it is to be. if I wanted to mimic natures way and the sun i'd grow outside.

Philip's cmh has a cri of 92. Sun has 100.

cfl's are far superior to anything the sun can produce.

eye hortiliux daylight blue MH is the closest spectrum to the sun. alot of research facilities use it.

KryptoBud said:

cfl's are far superior to anything the sun can produce.

Click to expand...

Someone’s calling out the sun!!