You're a bit wrong and right there. Lets say we have a true 100w LED from a great company, and a 100w HPS from a great company. The 100w LED will wipe the floor with the 100w HPS because it has focused reflecting lens on every LED, light production is spread over a greater area, wavelengths are all targeted so no power is wasted on useless spectrums and lots of heat like with HID.
I think we should stick to the real world. That is never the case and you're leaving out a very important part of the equation. The cost of the lamp. Your 100W LED would be several times more expensive to start off with.
You can definitely grow more plant with less power using LED, I'd say half as much power as HID if you get it from one of the best LED companies. It also seems from people that go with the better companies for their LED panels, they report that their finished bud is of a higher quality. My 395w LED panel (252x3w LEDs + 6x3w fans), is definitely kicking more ass than my 400w Super HPS with digital ballast was doing (much better penetration, WAY more trichomes).
Sorry man, I have to call BS on more trichromes.. Not that HPS has more but I really don't think your type of light effects that. That's your nutes and strain.
I've never grown with a 600w HID but I imagine its at least as good as one with how much better it is than my 400. But the thing set me back $1100 (give or take $50), I don't mind because it will easily recoup its costs with the first harvest, and there is so much less heat (25% as much or less I'd say).
1100 bucks recouped in one run? Are you kidding me? When people say 'recouped' it's in savings over your harvest.. how could you have saved 1100 bucks.. there is no way in hell a 600w would cost 1100 bucks to run for one cycle..
Unfortunately I won't be saving that much money because the panel uses 395w and I suppose a 400w + a digital ballast isn't that much more. I should have only gotten perhaps a 290w, because with the panel I have its 62w of uber LED per square foot and i probably only needed 35w which yeah works out to needing about half as much wattage with good LED as with good HPS
Was this last part just double talk?
Here is how it works....
1000W eqivilant in LED's 600-1100 bucks easy.
800 bucks in HID's get's you 2 600W systems.
1000W eq LED get's you 2lb per lamp (you wish)
2 600's get you 3 lbs (do able by most people)
3lb > 2lb HID wins for less money and the extra lb will pay for the extra power, and the lamps. That's 'recouped'. You're still a lb shy and spent more on your light to save 60-100 bucks total in power..
Next run, same thing. 3 vs 2.. you'll never ever catch up. I'll always have more product and that will pay for all my power with money to spare. I'll be racking profits while you're still paying off your lamp.
The problem is that weed is worth too much and power is relatively cheap. Weed would have to drop down to 8 bucks an oz or power would have to sky rocket up to 8 bucks a kWh for LED to start to save you money.. Feel free to do what I did years ago. Break out an excel sheet and work the numbers and extrapolate that over years keeping in mind the value of the crop and the start up cost. HID's at this time win hands down over and over again.
You can't market economy to drag racers..