Re: Magic Beans' Advanced LED Diamond Series 200w VS. 250w HPS - Lemon Skunk Flood Ta
One of the facts I used when I went with HPS was that HID lighting is (or at least was) still the most efficient effective way to convert electricity into light that is available on the market. An HPS bulb produces approximately 140 lumens per watt, and with 1000w lights you get really good penetration.
The lumen argument is inherently flawed. Luminance flux (of which, the lumen is a measurement of) is
heavily weighted to give more precedence to those wavelengths which are
perceived by the human eye as being brightest. Those same wavelengths are among the
least useful to plants.
Much of a HPS setup's output is in the ranges that are perceived by our eyes as being brighter than others (given the same level of gross output). Therefore... higher lumen number.
In terms of gross (light) output, an LED setup which consumes the same amount of electricity as a HPS setup does... is
more efficient, since it produces less heat in the process (all light devices eat energy and sh!t two things, light and heat). A theoretically 100% light device would produce NO heat, but this is not possible with current technology, regardless of the type of light.
But there is more to it than just gross efficiency. A
properly designed LED setup (I cannot say whether or not there are such creatures yet) would produce only light in the specific wavelengths that are useful to plants and none in those which are not. Such a light would have a low lumen output in general and very low in specific comparison to a HPS (that consumes the same amount of electricity). But it would have a far higher
PAR reading.
In terms of penetration... a 1000-watt HPS may well have more penetrative ability than an LED setup that consumes the same amount of electricity. I couldn't say with any degree of certainty. The HPS has one source of light output while the LED one has many. And therefore, the HPS' one source has a large output vs. the LED's smaller output (per individual LED). Although I have an LED flashlight and have tested and found that if I cover it with several layers of cloth, that it will "shine" through more layers if I flip it to the setting that activates every individual LED than it does if I only have half of them activated - even though the output of each individual LED is the same in each case. So more LEDs does equal more penetration, it is just not clear to me how much in terms of a garden. I do not know of a formula that will take the variables of number of LEDs, their wavelengths, the output of each, the type of lens used, et cetera and give a penetration value.
One thing is for sure: Modern electronic HID ballasts are pretty efficient. Barring any extreme breakthroughs in the sodium/metal mixture in the bulbs, there won't be a great deal of improvement in the technology in the future. LED technology, in regards to lighting, is still being developed and improved upon and it would be fair to assume that
wherever the level of tech is at present, it will improve significantly in the future.