Canachris
Well-Known Member
My LED lights are around 5 years old. when I used MH/HPS, bulbs lasted X amount of time. Is that the case with LED lights
Do LED grow lights degrade after time?
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Skunksta
Well-Known Member
i know my lights state 50,000 and 100,000 hours.
I assume that is without degrading any , after that guess yes from my reading.
I may well be wrong sure someone will chime in also.
Unlike hps/mh, incandescent or fluorescent bulbs which degrade pretty quickly, you should get 10-15 years of use before there’s any appreciable degradation of quality LEDs.
Nunyabiz
Well-Known Member
Think mine are 100,000 hours before they lose 10%.
Thats 15 years burning 18 hours a day 365 days a year.
I have old style LED lights that I put in my house 15 years ago and they're still burning strong.
Thats 15 years burning 18 hours a day 365 days a year.
I have old style LED lights that I put in my house 15 years ago and they're still burning strong.
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Canachris
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the Input guys, it was just one of those crazy thoughts that ya think while enjoying the product
yes, but a lot depends on how hard the emitters are driven.
led rigs are purposefully under-driven. a mfgr may choose to run the emitters harder, shortening the lifespan of the rig, but most are under driven by about 50%. if you build your own, that is about the level you'd shoot for.
in reality if you are building your rig within those specs, the driver is likely to degrade faster than the emitters. most of the rigs i built and have maintained are nearing a decade or over of use. the most common thing i fix is a tired or burnt driver.
in every instance the emitters and rig have been as efficient, in some cases more, than original after replacing an old driver. the emitters themselves have not lost anything noticeable. if i was running them harder, i'm positive i would have seen a greater degradation.
One of the popular benefits of LED lighting is the potential for long life before the diodes start to go out.
The way I see it, if the manufacturer were to push them higher than the 50% the customers would be happy until the lights started burning out. Then the customer would blame the company for trying to cheat them by giving exactly what the customer thought they wanted.
.Up to the grower whether there is getting to be too much of an accumulation of dust and dried up spray on the LEDs. Some of the stuff we spray on our plants, stuff like Neem Oil, foliar feeds, insecticides and fungicides can build up on the lights and make them a bit dimmer even though they are still putting out the same light levels as the day they were bought.
you can clean them. i clean my cobs between grows. straight, warm clean water, and a clean soft cotton rag. you can clean smaller emitters as well. just make sure they are left to dry for 72 hrs and are completely free of moisture before firing them.
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Canachris
Well-Known Member
My100 watt HLG quantum boards were notorious for bad drivers. But got great reviews for price verses performance. From what little research I did the drivers on these quantum boards got too hot and crapped out, so I got some 1" stand-offs and 4 or 5 years later still going ,most drivers of this type didn't last more than 2 years. Can the driver make the light run hotter or more intense xand damage my leaves ?
yes to both.
in most cases as long as you stick to the same specs and type of driver, you can replace it with any brand, or an equivalent.
most times when i replace a mean well hlg, i will use an equivalent elg model in the same spec.
the elg is the 'budget' model, yet has a greater warranty, and more dimming options. elg's are only available within limited specs though. they can run 1/3 to 1/2 cheaper depending on supplier etc.
you'll find moon and pairu are other drivers often used by mfgrs. there's nothing wrong with them, they don't have the rep mean well does, but they can get the job done. they'll match mean well specs, and i'd use them for the money, but i would not expect the same lifespan.
The Twisted One
Well-Known Member
It was a Quantum board and a PAR meter that sold me. In my experience, what kills an LED is heat, meaning the key to survival is the ability to effectively and efficiently remove heat, and the far most efficient is a heat sink. An HLG Quantum light uses a large flat piece of aluminum as a heat sink. Mind you, bolting the driver directly to this chunk of aluminum probably wasn’t the best idea, but the question is can this be improved upon?
indeed. Build a better heat sink. Remove more heat faster and more efficiently. How? Heat sinks with fins…. We’ve been using them forever in amps. A finned heat sink properly attached to the aluminum plate the LEDs are attached to it will not only run a LOT cooler, but with a good driver, you can overclock them without fear of overheating. I use Meanwell drivers that allow for overclocking. In 4 years, I haven’t seen any noticeable degradation in light output. Those Samsung LM-301x LED’s rock!
indeed. Build a better heat sink. Remove more heat faster and more efficiently. How? Heat sinks with fins…. We’ve been using them forever in amps. A finned heat sink properly attached to the aluminum plate the LEDs are attached to it will not only run a LOT cooler, but with a good driver, you can overclock them without fear of overheating. I use Meanwell drivers that allow for overclocking. In 4 years, I haven’t seen any noticeable degradation in light output. Those Samsung LM-301x LED’s rock!
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Canachris
Well-Known Member
Will placing the 1" stand off's under the driver creating a 1" gap between the board and driver keep the driver cool enough to get extra time out from it ?
if the driver is built with an internal ground it's fine. those drivers look like they were built to be dismounted and moved if necessary, i'd say you are ok.
The Twisted One
Well-Known Member
Indeed it will. Isolating two individual heat sources is never a bad thing. HLG should have done that from the git go
The Twisted One
Well-Known Member
Here’s a shot of the top of our lights. Note the robust heat sinks. These allow me to overclock the Meanwell drivers and still keep the heat in check. At full bore (approx 550 watts) our lights consist of four boards, each with 288 Samsung LM-301’s being driven at right at 137.5 watts per board. I couldn’t do this with a flat piece of aluminum. Those fins on the heatsinks do a helluva a job at removing heat. I also have a few 30” fans located above the canopy that keep plenty of air moving across those heatsinks.
Any future LED’s we add will have to have a robust method of removing heat. Doing so will also insure you get many, many years of very reliable, capable lighting.
Any future LED’s we add will have to have a robust method of removing heat. Doing so will also insure you get many, many years of very reliable, capable lighting.
wow that tech is already out of date, and it's only like 3 minutes old. the majority of mfgrs have evolved to strip rigs now and rely on the air space for moving heat from the emitters.
the mfgrs have moved from the boards as the cost of the board itself is too great, and the cost of repair if an emitter blows is prohibitive. if a board pooches an emitter the whole board is toast, whereas if a strip rig blows one, they just replace the affected strip and go again.
The Twisted One
Well-Known Member
Funny you say that Bluter. Just today I acquired two Mars Hydro 4x4 lights consisting of 6 light strips each and driven at around 450 watts. These lights looks to have a combination of 3k, 4k and maybe 5k emitters along with what looks like several rows of 660 nm reds. And yes. Looks like I can remove the strips individually. Freaking cool bro. Really cool. Further, these lights have phone cable looking plug ins so I presume we could piggyback the lights and control intensity of all of them with one dial. Again, pretty cool considering it takes me connecting a watt meter and adjusting the pot on each Meanwell driver with a tiny screwdriver to dial in the intensity of the lights, nwhich happens several times each grow. This would sure simplify that process. Bigtime.
This said, we have not had one light board failure on any of our 288 boards since we’ve had them. Not one.
This said, we have not had one light board failure on any of our 288 boards since we’ve had them. Not one.
A 10% drop or loss pretty much matches what comes up when asking Mr Google the basic questions of "do LED lights degrade after time" and then asking "do LED grow lights degrade after time". Website after website coming up with the 5 to 10% change after 50,000 to 100 thousand hours.
10% can be a lot when growing for production whether vegetables and fruits or for Cannabis flower buds. A drop like that might not matter much if growing houseplants in a window with the grow light supplementing sunshine. But if the 10% drop in light equates to a decrease in the harvest then maybe replacement of the LED bulbs, tubes or strips would be best.
If a grower is meeting a suggested minimum of 35 watts of wall draw per square foot when new then that 10% can be important. That 10 loss in light does not mean a 10% drop in electricity use so there would seem to be a money loss on top of the light loss.
It would have to be up to the individual gardener as to what level of light drop or loss is acceptable.
In case anyone else reading this thread is still thinking on their lighting needs or is just curious there are several articles on light types on the Advanced Nutrients website that might be interesting. Go to the homepage for the company and click on the "articles" drop-down menu.
A drop in the efficiency is not as noticeable to most of us in our everyday lighting use. I had one particular CFL bulb in our old house that seemed to burning strong even after almost 20 years of 24/7 continuous use. Until one day I had reason to set up another one of the same wattage equivalent and the two were within feet of each other. That made the old and new bulb light difference stand out. When the project was done I switched out the older bulb.
in reality it is either well under that, or conversely, far above. it all depends on the emitters used and the driver chosen.
all my personal built rigs are under-driven by at least 50%. also i never run dimming over 90%, both increase lifespan exponentially, and decrease degradation to the point is it negligible. in every instance, the driver has degraded or been a fail point long before the emitters caused an issue.
every time we have replaced a driver we have come back with a rig testing as well or better than it was new. everything depends on how it was put together in the first place. in my instance i was in control of all the variables, someone buying a rig off the shelf won't be.
the earliest rigs i sold are going on ten yrs now, every single one is still in operation.
you can do that or use centralized arduino control which will allow you to input and control multiple parameters from one spot.
that's an internal control which is meant to be set only once. most mean well drivers have both that, and an external dimming option allowing for easy adjustment with a potentiometer or digital control.
cheap mean wells only have an internal dimmer, which is supposed to be set once, and then intensity is controlled by simply raising or lowering the light. changing the setting effects lifespan of both the emitters and driver.
all of my rigs have both the external and internal control.
Nunyabiz
Well-Known Member
The strips I bought were mounted on thick aluminum strips, then I used thermotape to mount to heat sinks and spread 3" apart and mounted the driver on top of the aluminum L brackets with just air under the driver.
Even at 100% power and running 24 hours straight it just gets a couple degrees over room temp on the heat sinks.
Overall they usually run cool to the touch.
Even at 100% power and running 24 hours straight it just gets a couple degrees over room temp on the heat sinks.
Overall they usually run cool to the touch.
