Can I honestly ask why most of you just don't build your own LED fixtures and save a lot of money? Seriously, I've been doing this myself for about a year now, and can hit that same PAR (photosynthetic active radiation) values as the HydroGrow for about 1/4 the price using Crees and knockoff 3-watt emitters. It's absurdly easy to do and requires just basic electronic knowledge. While I understand that you have to make a profit, these type of units are becoming all to common in chinese manufacturing. Frankly I wouldn't touch a unit with 1watt emitters because they are increasingly a dime a dozen, but to each their own. You don't need dimmers on grow lights or color controllers either.
Interesting how you say you can hit the same PAR values as my light, when that information is not publicly available. What's funny to me is that you talk about 3W LED's, when they have nowhere near the luminous efficacy of 3, 1W LED's, so your assumption is false.
If it were absurdly easy to make LED panels, everyone and their grandma would have their solder guns out, and their electrical boards making these things. They'd have the correct nm's, divided up into the correct ratios, on panels that give generous watt per square foot values with high intensity, 60 degree beams, but not even 90% of the companies selling LED's are anywhere close to figuring all that stuff out (even though the research is posted on my website). "Do-it-yourselfer's" making their own panels, have limited spectral output, and poor design configurations. Leave it to the plant scientists who have already done the math...
The Japanese are already using red dominate LED fixtures for promoting flower and bud growth in commercial agriculture, and NASA is using them for spaceflight. The technology is proven, and offers a substantial power improvement over HID and fluorescent, but some facts here have been scewed a bit for the sake of marketing.
Sorry, but no. The Japanese recently began testing Showa Denko's red 660nm LED's at their METI research center, along side CFL's, to see how they affect growth/flowering rate. Nasa was using panels built by SolarOasis that have nowhere near the power or spectral output to support growth comparable to HID. The technology has not been proven by either of these research companies, or it would be widely used, instead of tested. They are using nowhere near the level of LED technology that is incorporated within my lights, to grow plants.
If I put HID as close to the plants as the HydroGrow LEDs I'd likely start a fire. While this may seem like an advantage for the LED units, the problem is theres a big deviation in light hitting the top vs middle of the plant. The further away the light from the plant is the more even the lighting density is, and this DOES matter. This is why HID can do some things LED can't.
I ran 3, 1000W HID's at that height, with air-cooled hoods and a nicely ventilated room, with no problems, and no fire. As long as you use our panels as directed (60 degree for plants up to 3' tall, 30 degree for plants over 4' tall), you will have better results vs HID at budding out the lower and middle branches of your plants. This has been proven now by two of our customers, one of which has a testimonial on our website. HID can certainly cover a lot more area than LED with a single bulb, but we aren't using multiple 1000W LED's here either...
A 1000watt HID should be able to illuminate a 100sq foot area for growing purposes with augmenting red reflectors. How many HydroGrow systems would it require to hit the same PAR for 100sq feet?
Let's take it from an expert: Ed Rosenthal, who is currently using our LED's in a test. He is using a 1000W HPS in a 4' x 4' area. If you try and spread it out over 100 square feet (10' x 10'), you'll barely yield anything, except what's right under the light. Real growers know that in order to achieve maximum yield with HID, you need at least 50W per square foot.
There are only two colors really required for crop growth, and they are deep blue and far red - both colors are efficiently handled by cheap LEDs. Green, yellow and UV wavelengths are wasted, so there's no need for white light of any type. This is what makes LEDs so darn good for this practice because you can choose the ones that only emit in photosynthetic active regions while even the best HID wastes energy emitting light in spectral regions plants don't want.
Marijuana requires 439nm, 469nm, 642nm, and 667nm for photosynthesis (439nm, and 483nm for Carotenoids). Plants absorb different colors at different efficiency rates. Chlorophyll A absorbs 439nm at 63% efficiency, while it absorbs 667nm at 43% efficiency. Chlorophyll B absorbs 469nm at 80% efficiency, and 642nm at 20% efficiency. This shows that Plants absorb lighter blue, and deep red for growth. Far red refers to infra-red, so again, you are mistaken. As far as your assumption that white has no value with plants, here's some research from a biotech firm indicating the contrary:
https://envsupport.licor.com/docs/AppNote5.pdf It also shows that plants do absorb green light, even though we don't use green LED's in our units.
Again, nothing against the HydroGrow. A tightly packed array of 1watt emitters is just not the most efficient way to do this and is starting to become rather cliche'.
Peace -
We don't have a tightly packed array of 1 watt emitters. We use 126W on a board that our competitors pack 288W onto. We use 63W on a board that our competitors pack 112 to 119W on.
DOXA
