LED Grow Lights for Your Grow Operation

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LED Grow Lights For Your Grow Operation

Around here, we recommend LED Grow Lights for both commercial growers and hobbyists.

With today’s technology, they are the best and most efficient way to grow.

Most growers out there have experience with HPS grow lights, they’re a proven and reliable technology, reasonably priced, and in terms of raw power are really tough to beat. 

So, why use LED grow lights? 

One word. Efficiency. 

1000 Watt HPS grow lights are the gold standard for commercial growers. Let’s see how a typical 1000W HPS light compares to an equivalent LED grow Light. 

Efficiency

There are three main benefits LED grow lights have over HPS that we’ll talk about now: Low Power, Low Heat, and Low Maintenance

Low Power

By design, LEDs more energy efficient. Typically, you’ll see around a 30-40% energy savings. For example, the Kind K5 XL1000 is designed to replace a 1000 Watt HPS but will typically draw 650 Watts. That’s a 35% savings in electricity. If you’re running many lights or are in an area that has expensive electricity, cutting that monthly power bill will end up saving you a ton of money in the long run. 

Low Heat

If you don’t properly manage the heat levels in your grow room then your plants won't survive. With HPS that typically means additional fans, ventilation and in many cases, air conditioning. You’re spending money on lights that heat up your grow room and then spending more money on equipment to cool your grow room down to safe levels for your plants. 

That’s not just expensive, it’s wasteful. 

This is where LED grow lights really shine (consider yourself lucky that's the only pun I’m slipping into this article). Yes, you get a huge energy saving just by using LEDs, but you save just as much if not more by reducing cooling (a.k.a HVAC) costs. 

Depending on where you’re located, even running only a few 1000W HPS lights will require an AC unit. Each AC unit can cost as much as an HPS grow light and use just as much energy. If you’re running a larger commercial operation, you’ll need an HVAC professional to come in and make sure your grow room is properly cooled - that’s more equipment you’ll need to buy and have professionally installed. 

With LED grow lights you’ll spend less money on equipment and the power required to run it. How much less? That 30-40% energy savings mentioned earlier is more like 50-60% when taking into account HVAC costs. 

Low Maintenance

HPS lights require a bulb replacement roughly every 9 months. The bulbs aren’t cheap and if you don’t replace them frequently, your crop quality will suffer. LED grow lights don’t need bulb replacements. They also don’t require the same inrush current to ignite their bulbs, and are safe to plug into a standard wall outlet. That means that you don’t need to spend money buying the special lighting controllers that you’ll need to run multiple 1000W HPS lights.

Between the bulbs, lighting controllers, and cooling equipment, you’re left with a lot less equipment to purchase, manage, and maintain.

With LED grow lights you’ll have a leaner, greener, and easier to manage grow operation.  

Yields

Many LED grow lights will claim that they not only use less power than HPS but they also will produce higher yields. Its been my experience that most LED grow lights will produce nearly equivalent yields, edging out HPS in many cases. 

However, high quality LED grow light can increase your yields significantly. In this side-by-side study, the Black Dog PhytoMAX 800 increased yields over a 1000W DE HPS by more than 25% while reducing HVAC costs by 50%. 

Concerns

The efficiency of LED grow lights is attractive, but experienced growers still usually have two main concerns:  Spectrum/Penetration and Cost

Spectrum / Penetration 

5 years ago this was the main problem with LED grow lights. They either didn’t have the right spectrum or didn’t have the canopy penetration necessary to flower properly. Thankfully, the technology has caught up. Today, you'll hear different brands claim that their custom spectrum is the only one that is perfect for your plants, but one thing is certain - these lights can grow. 

Cost

The upfront costs of LEDs are significantly higher than traditional HPS grow lights. Sometimes you might not have the cash on hand or just not be comfortable spending so much on a single fixture.

As growers that spend months meticulously caring for our plants before we can harvest, we’re used to thinking long term. And in the long term, you’ll end up spending significantly less by using LED Grow lights.

Let's look at a simple scenario comparing a single 1000W HPS to a Kind K5 XL1000.

Some things to keep in mind:

  • A typical 1000W HPS will actually draw around 1150 Watts due to the power drawn by the ballast.
  • The lights are on 24 hours a day during vegetative growth and 12 hours a day for flowering. 
  • We’ll spend about a third of our time in vegetative growth and two thirds of our time flowering.
  • HPS lights will require additional ventilation for cooling. A $100 and 110 Watt fan should do the trick. 
  • Grow light bulbs should be replaced every 9 months and cost around $50 each.
  • Cost of electricity will vary a lot depending on where you’re located but let’s say it costs 10 cents per killowatt hour for the sake of our calculations. 

To calculate the cost of electrcity for one year let’s assume we will spend about a third of our time, or 122 days of the year, in vegetative growth with our grow light on for 24 hours and the remaining 243 days in flowering with the light on for 12 hours. To calculate the cost it is:

Number of days * Number of hours on per day * cost per kilowatt hour * kilowattage

In the case of our LED that draws 650 Watts, the Kilowattage is .65. The HPS draws 1260 Watts it has a 1.25 kilowattage. 

So let's look at a single light cost of ownership.

 

LED

 

HPS

 

Initial Cost

Kind XL1000

$1695.00

Ballast

$320.00

 

 

 

Reflector

$130.00

 

 

 

Bulb

$50.00

 

 

 

Ventilation Fan

$100.00

 

Total

$1695.00

 

$600.00

Wattage

Kind XL1000

650W

Bulb

1000W

 

 

 

Ballast

150W

 

 

 

Ventilation Fan

110W

 

Total

650W

 

1260W

Electricity per Year

Vegetative

$190.32

 

$368.93

 

Flowering

$189.54

 

$367.42

 

Total

$379.86

 

$736.34

1 Year Cost of Ownership

Initial Cost

$1695.00

 

$600.00

 

Electricity

$379.86

 

$736.34

 

Bulb Replacement (1)

$0.00

 

$50.00

 

 

LED

 

HPS

 

Total

$2074.86

 

$1386.34

3 Year Cost of Ownership

Initial Cost

$1695.00

 

$600.00

 

Electricity

$1139.58

 

$2209.03

 

Bulb Replacement (4)

$0.00

 

$200.00

 

 

LED

 

HPS

 

Total

$2834.58

 

$3009.03

10 Year Cost of Ownership

Initial Cost

$1695.00

 

$600.00

 

Electricity

$3798.60

 

$7363.44

 

Bulb Replacement (13)

$0.00

 

$2600.00

 

 

LED

 

HPS

 

Total

$5493.60

 

$10563.44

 

In the worst case, you’ll break even after about 3 years. That's a decent return in most cases.

BUT, if you take into account the potential for increased yields and the fact that you will need a more substantial HVAC system for an HPS operation, the break even point comes much more quickly

Check out the ROI calculation for the Black Dog PhytoMAX 800 side-by-side study here. They broke even in under a year. 

Most LED grow lights are are rated to last at least 10 years when used in a standard grow cycle. They’ll have more than pay for themselves in savings by the time you’re ready to upgrade, even if you only wait 5 years. Also, given the pace of LED grow light development, the top of the line models that you upgrade to 5-10 years down the line are going to be far more power efficient and produce even better crops. 

Quality

It’s really easy to find bad LED grow lights. Many manufacturers out there use low quality components or diodes that are simply not designed to grow plants. 

My advice, before you buy a grow light of any kind, make sure you can find some grow journals online that show good results.

Do a bit of research and leverage other grower’s experience so that you get a light you know will work. If you find a super cheap grow light that’s promising a huge footprint, perfect spectrum, 70% energy savings over HPS, and no one on the internet has anything to say about it, you should be extremely skeptical.

Think about the long term.

LED Grow Lights aren’t going away. They’re only going to get better and cheaper. If you’re starting or upgrading your commercial operation then LED grow lights will be a huge competitive advantage. Your electricity bill will be far lower, especially during hot summer summer months, you’ll spend less money and resources on managing heat issues, and you’ll be growing amazing crops. 

Conclusion

I hope you’re excited to try out LED grow lights.

There’s a lot of information out there and it can be hard to tell what’s real and can be trusted. The numbers I used for our analysis were estimates, but I tried to keep them reasonable. If something looks off, let me know!

LED grow lights aren’t some magical technology that will you turn into a master grower overnight. They have their advantages and disadvantages but, as you've seen, it’s not too difficult to calculate if they’ll be worth it for you. They’ve been worth it for me and the growers that I’ve helped get set up, and I really think now is a great time to make the switch. 

Need help getting LEDs for your grow room?  We'll do a free consultation and help you get everything you need to start growing!

Just sign up here to get in touch with one of our expert growers.

Any questions? Either leave a comment or shoot me an email at trevor@allgreenhydroponics.com!

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  • Trevor
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