600W LED Grow

re: GLH 600W LED Grow

Right on brother, right on. I'm really starting to believe myself that keeping it basic is about all the plants want anyways. I mean, I've used CO2 and every nute in the book and then I've done gorilla grows... they both work, I harvest good bud bottom line. Anyways, I'm starting to rant, keep it up bro.
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

atlashomeric said:
Right on brother, right on. I'm really starting to believe myself that keeping it basic is about all the plants want anyways. I mean, I've used CO2 and every nute in the book and then I've done gorilla grows... they both work, I harvest good bud bottom line. Anyways, I'm starting to rant, keep it up bro.
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i truly believe keeping it simple is the best way to go. some of the best harvest i have had were when i kept it simple. plus you will save allot of money to..lol. CO2 is always a good thing to have but as far as all kinda of nutes and additives keep it simple. maybe just try a few things here and their to see if they really work or not. dont get me wrong ive used some additives before that worked pretty good. but most of them out their are snake oil to just make money for the nute company's.
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

You growing organic Irish? I know I have asked already...somewhere...sometime. lol

I been practicing the keep it simple method for a while now...it's good stuff. I also like to KISS with my ladies in open spaces. No other plant is allowed to touch any other plant.

The ladies love that too...might not be "efficient" as some would say....to each their own eh!?

So what you using irish? What you reccomend for somebody wanting to do an extremely basic organic grow. The less nutrients needed the better...

=-Go
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

go green said:
You growing organic Irish? I know I have asked already...somewhere...sometime. lol

I been practicing the keep it simple method for a while now...it's good stuff. I also like to KISS with my ladies in open spaces. No other plant is allowed to touch any other plant.

The ladies love that too...might not be "efficient" as some would say....to each their own eh!?

So what you using irish? What you reccomend for somebody wanting to do an extremely basic organic grow. The less nutrients needed the better...

=-Go
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Green I do organic out doors and blend my own soil. I never feed after that.
I use chicken manure, purple cow manure, cotton burr, Azomite and some top notice soil along with some perlite and vermiculite. Dont see why you couldnt blend the same batch with better aeration and use it indoors. I would load up on worm castings, bat guanos and the such. You can buy veg and bloom guanos that have different nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium counts.

Some dude at another site I cant name does all organic and only waters with plain WATER his entire grow, pretty cool if your all about going green..:rollit:
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

That's what I am talking about BOT....that is for me bro...I used to roll that way as I told you...it's a matter of the right amount of stuff...that releases at the right amount of times...

Link me up if you can?

Sorry for the small jack Irish.

It is ALL about Going Green bro....

Our fucking planet depends on people like us...well...to an extent. lol

Peace dudes. Thanks Bot!

Go Green!!!!
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

go green said:
You growing organic Irish? I know I have asked already...somewhere...sometime. lol

I been practicing the keep it simple method for a while now...it's good stuff. I also like to KISS with my ladies in open spaces. No other plant is allowed to touch any other plant.

The ladies love that too...might not be "efficient" as some would say....to each their own eh!?

So what you using irish? What you reccomend for somebody wanting to do an extremely basic organic grow. The less nutrients needed the better...

=-Go
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no i dont grow organic, i use GH flora series. if you wanted to go organic i would use some nutes called Age Old, they rock!!! my buddy pulls some huge plants with that stuff and its cheap to buy.
IMO i think its best when the plants arnt allowed to touch each other, stops allot of shading and they from fighting over space. the best grows i had were when the plants didnt touch, its just hard to do that with leds because of the foot print.
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

The more I research, the more I find everybody does it their own way...with slight tweaks here and there.

There must be a simple solution to organic gardening, and solution whereas everybody can get their hands on the ingredients without mail-order.

I am thinking about going back to straight promix. Maybe some vermiculite and perlite added. Then just feed them my AN Dr. Hornby's Iguana Juice -bloom.

Won't that work?

Glad you have seen results when the plants have more space. I am trying to figure out how to set up my 30x30 tent to flower a single large lady.

Any idears????

-Gooo

-Go
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

irishboy said:
i know when the 3w are at full power them get real hot and have heat problems and the life span on the leds dosent last as long. this is what i have been told by allot of people. dont know for sure?
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Thermal management of the LED die is critical to optimum performance. Excessive heat will degrade LED performance- produce a noticeable red-shift in spectral output, reduce intensity (photon output), and dramatically reduce the life of the LED. It looks as though this unit uses a big chunk of aluminum and a bunch of fans for cooling- the brute force method. The whole notion that LED's do not create heat is a bunch of BS- if you cranking a lot current through them they get self-destructively hot.

The '3W' LED's you referred to in this post are probably, actually (hopefully), 3pcs. 1mm2 1W dies packaged on a small metal core PCB. These packages are actually intended to be used in incandescent and halogen replacement bulbs popular in Asia and Europe. If it is working for them...

With most of these new LED fixtures I had as many problems trying to figure it out how much power is actually pumped through the LED's as everyone else seems to be having. There will be 10 - 15% losses in the AC-DC LED drive circuit, additional losses in the PFC circuit if so equipped, and then the power to operate the fans and the AC-DC conversion losses in this circuit as well. What is left over to power the LED's? Add to this the highly variable nature of the LED Vf and, if you do not have a compensation circuitry or a software solution to account for this, it is anyones' guess how much power is actually applied to the LED's. The only way to know is to measure the current and voltage at the LED power input when the fixture has reached thermal equilibrium.

Regarding getting more watts of light out than specified- it is possible to overdrive the LED device to get more light out of it than specified by the manufacturer- as long as two things are kept in mind- doing so will increase heat load on the thermal system and therefore stress the LED die if not accounted for, and, yes you will in fact get more light out of the die, but, at the cost of generating this light less efficiently- no freebies in engineering. A 1W die is pretty much rated at it's maximum efficiency point in terms radiant power vs. Watts (and the ability to 'practically' remove heat from the die).

These are the facts.
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

astroastro said:
Thermal management of the LED die is critical to optimum performance. Excessive heat will degrade LED performance- produce a noticeable red-shift in spectral output, reduce intensity (photon output), and dramatically reduce the life of the LED. It looks as though this unit uses a big chunk of aluminum and a bunch of fans for cooling- the brute force method. The whole notion that LED's do not create heat is a bunch of BS- if you cranking a lot current through them they get self-destructively hot.

The '3W' LED's you referred to in this post are probably, actually (hopefully), 3pcs. 1mm2 1W dies packaged on a small metal core PCB. These packages are actually intended to be used in incandescent and halogen replacement bulbs popular in Asia and Europe. If it is working for them...

With most of these new LED fixtures I had as many problems trying to figure it out how much power is actually pumped through the LED's as everyone else seems to be having. There will be 10 - 15% losses in the AC-DC LED drive circuit, additional losses in the PFC circuit if so equipped, and then the power to operate the fans and the AC-DC conversion losses in this circuit as well. What is left over to power the LED's? Add to this the highly variable nature of the LED Vf and, if you do not have a compensation circuitry or a software solution to account for this, it is anyones' guess how much power is actually applied to the LED's. The only way to know is to measure the current and voltage at the LED power input when the fixture has reached thermal equilibrium.

Regarding getting more watts of light out than specified- it is possible to overdrive the LED device to get more light out of it than specified by the manufacturer- as long as two things are kept in mind- doing so will increase heat load on the thermal system and therefore stress the LED die if not accounted for, and, yes you will in fact get more light out of the die, but, at the cost of generating this light less efficiently- no freebies in engineering. A 1W die is pretty much rated at it's maximum efficiency point in terms radiant power vs. Watts (and the ability to 'practically' remove heat from the die).

These are the facts.
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Damn your one smart individual......shit....I wish I knew all that technical data!

The way I look at it is its like over clocking your processor. Ya it will make it faster by increasing the front side bus and over all the frequency but it comes at a cost. It degrades the life of the processor and will fry it out if not properly cooled. Same applies with LEDs I would imagine.....you can drive the shit out of them but you will only get degradation and over all system efficiency will decline. Those LEDs are 3w/3chip so three of them are attached to a single DIE and by the power readings I would say they are being ran at a safe level. Irishs light uses 729w so if 729w/600led = 1.215w per LED but in theory it would consume 1800w if each LED was being driven at 3w but I don't think that would be a good thing for the light it self. I dont know, that is where my comprehension ends.

buttt that is a good thing because 1.215w per chip is less then half of the chips full capacity. So if you could tweak up to like so say a solid 2.25w per chip and turn the total juice up to 1350w you still be at only 75% of full capacity which is no where near over clocking.. I dont know am I thinking straight???? just a thought cause im blazed..lol
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

astroastro said:
Thermal management of the LED die is critical to optimum performance....

These are the facts.
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Very well said and very true.

botanist85 said:
Damn your one smart individual....lol..shit..

...that is where my comprehension ends.

buttt that is a good thing because 1.215w per chip is less then half of the chips full capacity. So if you could tweak up to like so say a solid 2w per chip and turn the total juice up to 1200w you still be at only 75% of full capacity which is no where near over clocking.. I dont know am I thinking straight???? just a thought cause im blazed..lol
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Yep, your logic is right but I'm not checking the math. I don't think semiconductor engineers refer to it as over clocking though. The one I spoke with referred to it as over driving.

We were standing in line at McDonalds waiting to order when this conversation occurred sooooo he may have been using simple words in order to get through my questions quickly?!? IDK.

Good Job Irish!!!:bravo:
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

The way I look at it is its like over clocking your processor. Ya it will make it faster by increasing the front side bus and over all the frequency but it comes at a cost. It degrades the life of the processor and will fry it out if not properly cooled.

..... Irishs light uses 729w so if 729w/600led = 1.215w per LED but in theory it would consume 1800w if each LED was being driven at 3w but I don't think that would be a good thing for the light it self.[/QUOTE]

Your analogy to the over-clocked CPU is right on the money. In fact thermal density of these high power LED's is very comparable to that of high performance CPU's. Heat and semiconductors are bad combination- LED's are in fact more susceptible and exhibit more negative effects from heat than 'normal' semiconductors, an issue of materials and process.

Irish's Watt measurement was made on the AC side of the fixture, so does not account for the losses in the conversion circuits or the drain from the fans, however 729W at the input and 600W through the LED's makes some sense of it all- it depends on the efficiency of the conversion circuits and the amount of power required by the many fans.

Regarding boosting the power level- I think they are probably running as much power through the LED's in this design as they can- attempting to drive 2W throught the devices would probably incur a significant thermal penalty- there is only so much heat you can extract with a chunk of aluminum and fans. At these power levels, alternative cooling methods are typically employed. It would be interesting to run the light under a thermal imager to see what the actual die temps are.

I am an old school indoor grower interested in starting up again. I have some experience in designing with LED's and know that horticultural is a fantastic candidate for LED technology, but so far I am unsure of the products that I have seen so far on the market- I could give you a laundry list of the of the concerns I have so far in reviewing this market- maybe that is for another day or another venue. I really like and appreciate all the hard work people like Irish are doing to prove these products out in actual field use (invaluable)- the information I have gained from the forums has been a lot more complete and accurate than most of the information the manufacturers of these devices are putting out.
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

astroastro said:
The way I look at it is its like over clocking your processor. Ya it will make it faster by increasing the front side bus and over all the frequency but it comes at a cost. It degrades the life of the processor and will fry it out if not properly cooled.

Irishs light uses 729w so if 729w/600led = 1.215w per LED but in theory it would consume 1800w if each LED was being driven at 3w but I don't think that would be a good thing for the light it self.

Your analogy to the over-clocked CPU is right on the money. In fact thermal density of these high power LED's is very comparable to that of high performance CPU's. Heat and semiconductors are bad combination- LED's are in fact more susceptible and exhibit more negative effects from heat than 'normal' semiconductors, an issue of materials and process.

Irish's Watt measurement was made on the AC side of the fixture, so does not account for the losses in the conversion circuits or the drain from the fans, however 729W at the input and 600W through the LED's makes some sense of it all- it depends on the efficiency of the conversion circuits and the amount of power required by the many fans.

Regarding boosting the power level- I think they are probably running as much power through the LED's in this design as they can- attempting to drive 2W throught the devices would probably incur a significant thermal penalty- there is only so much heat you can extract with a chunk of aluminum and fans. At these power levels, alternative cooling methods are typically employed. It would be interesting to run the light under a thermal imager to see what the actual die temps are.

I am an old school indoor grower interested in starting up again. I have some experience in designing with LED's and know that horticultural is a fantastic candidate for LED technology, but so far I am unsure of the products that I have seen so far on the market- I could give you a laundry list of the of the concerns I have so far in reviewing this market- maybe that is for another day or another venue. I really like and appreciate all the hard work people like Irish are doing to prove these products out in actual field use (invaluable)- the information I have gained from the forums has been a lot more complete and accurate than most of the information the manufacturers of these devices are putting out.
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Just to clarify things irish's panel draws a total of 740watts on the watt meter. And i dont know if this helps you guys but the working current of my panels is at 500mA.
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

GrowLEDHydro said:
Just to clarify things irish's panel draws a total of 740watts on the watt meter. And i dont know if this helps you guys but the working current of my panels is at 500mA.
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GrowLEDHydro- thanks for the reply. So, you are using 1/2W devices in this design? How many dies are on there?
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

500mA = 1/2 amp right? I dont know smack about electricity.......but maybe someone with a wealth of knowledge can show me the way.

Irishs light consumes 740w, but 3w/3chip leds X 600 = 1800w.....What I dont understand is the 1060w difference or is there some conversion that takes account of that?
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

I think if we knew the forward voltage (Vf) of the LED series strings when the fixture was operating we could multiply this by the forward current (500mA, as forward by GrowLEDHydro) and see how much power was being applied to the LED's out of the 740W total consumed by the fixture overall. The Vf measurement is easy to get (assuming they are using a constant current driver circuit for the LED's) but will have to be taken after the fixture has reached thermal equilibrium, as this value will fluctuate until operating temperature stabilizes.
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

Oh yea- I forgot to add- take the number you get fom above and multiply by the number of series strings of LED's to get the total LED Wattage.
 
re: GLH 600W LED Grow

I think that I calculated the 3w/3 chip leds each drawing 1.3w each, incorporating the forward voltage and current running at 500mA. So technically each 3w emitter isn't running at capacity, therefore the total power draw is around 740w including the drivers and fans. There are 3 chips or diodes in each emitter. I think the video that GLH has showing the difference in his first gen 1w lights and his 2nd gen 3w lights displays such a stark contrast in brightness because of A. more powerful emitters, and B. a more acute 90 degree viewing angle. Makes a difference.
 
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