Do LED grow lights degrade after time?

[bluter]

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.

that's a proper rig. if i ever build another it will be a strip rig.

 

[Nunyabiz]

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.

Yep, I rarely run mine full blast.
Usually dimmed by 50% so probably be many years before any appreciable loss, if it loses 10% ill just dim it 40% LOL.

 

[bluter]

Yep, I rarely run mine full blast.
Usually dimmed by 50% so probably be many years before any appreciable loss, if it loses 10% ill just dim it 40% LOL.

when you build your own you can choose how to drive them and get so much other flexibility. did you source the strips and channels from the same supplier ?

 

[Nunyabiz]

when you build your own you can choose how to drive them and get so much other flexibility. did you source the strips and channels from the same supplier ?

Yes I did, it was Pacific Light Concepts which is i think now out of business probably because of Covid.

 

[bluter]

Yes I did, it was Pacific Light Concepts which is i think now out of business probably because of Covid.

i was looking at some of my old suppliers and realize i'd have to find new ones as well. it really sucks.

 

[Canachris]

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.

Again, I need a love button... this is amazing

 

[KeithLemon]

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.

Thats a lot of lights.

 

[Icemud]

To answer the question... Yes. LED diodes do degrade, but much much slower than the traditional HPS bulbs.

2 factors really are key to this.... the quality of the LED diodes used, and the thermal cooling abilities of the grow light itself (heat is a killer of LED lifetime).


For the LED diode quality, generally higher quality LED diodes will last longer than cheap no name LED diodes. If you can find the type of LED diodes the light uses, you can look up what is called the LM-80 of the LED diodes, and this is a spec that will tell you approximately how long it takes for the LED chip to lose 20% of its light output. Generally they will run tests for around 6000 hours at different junction temps and then report the loss of lumens. Since most led grow lights currently are using samsung lm chips, i was looking for their data and couldn't find it. But I found similar samsung chips pushing a LM70 of 93,000 hours, which means at 93,000 hours, the LED diode will only be outputting 70% of its original lumenous output.... Its seems on average these chips lost about 3-5% lumenous output per 6000 hours, and the hotter the chips operate the faster they lose efficiency.

When I was doing a lot of LED research and grow light testing/reviews a few years back, it was quite a difference between cheap LED grow light diodes and good diodes... for instance most of the cheap epistar diodes from what I remember had LM-80 of 35,000-50,000 hours, where some of the Osram Oslon Hyper Red diodes has LM-95 of 100,000 hours (basically not losing more than 5% over like 15 years)... Diode brand and chip type definitely are a big factor in LED lumen maintenance.

Now if you were to run the light 18/6, 365 days a year, thats slightly over 6000 hours... so expect every year you use the LED grow light the output to reduce about 3-5% which is very minimal compared to the old HPS bulbs. This also has to do with how hard the LED's are driven, how good the thermal cooling of the light is and the quality/type of LED diodes used.