The first time you set up a LED grow light you'll be surprised how easy it is. LED light offers many benefits as to the traditional “HID” lights. In this article, let’s discuss the benefits of growing with LED’s. The benefits of LED grow lights:
- High-intensity light delivery in confined spaces such as closets or dressings
- Uses less power
- Produces less heat
- Silent
- Extremely low maintenance (approximately 100,000 h lifespan)
- Produces the right kind of light you need for your plants
Your LED grow light can consume up to 80% less energy than your typical “HID” light. This is due to the elimination of your power-robbing ballasts, cooling equipment, and the fresh & stale air equipment. Every grower knows that power consumption can be a strain on your bank account and it can raise some eyebrows. With LED lights, the roughly 80% savings in monthly electricity will help ease that strain. Not to mention the most important aspect of this whole business: your cost per plant will go down significantly, especially when you consider the average lifespan of LED lights is over 50,000 hours.
It’s equivalent to 7 and a half years of lighting 18 hours a day. That’s a lot of plants you’ll be growing with minimal investment. Another benefit of LED grow light kits is that
they produce a lot less heat than HID's. This allows your space to be significantly smaller and more confined, away from curious eyes.
LED grow light kits can be set up in cabinets, closets or sheds. The possibilities are endless, limited only by your creativity. The heat reduction from the light source means more control over the room’s temperature. Normally, a cracked door is enough to supply the needed fresh air ventilation for your plants if you’re using LED lights. Of course, it depends on the size of your grow room. With a proper setup, your plants will use almost all of the light emitted from the LED lamps. Plants enjoy specific colors of light for the optimum photosynthesis, so simply having a very bright light isn’t enough. A very bright green light won’t help your plants grow faster either. HID light indeed produces a lot of light in the infrared spectrum while HPS lights produce powerful yellow light. The advantage of LED grow light is that it provides a higher fraction of light in the all so important peak areas of the spectrum of chlorophyll absorption. This means that your LED grow lights will provide your plant the exact type of light it desires and needs for strong growth with minimal waste. At the beginning of indoor growing, many growers became disappointed with LED lights, because they were sold a light that wasn’t designed to be only a grow light. For adequate lighting, you need to determine how you will use the LED grow light kit. Either you use it as your primary light source or as an auxiliary one. Many growers use the LED light as auxiliary support to their HID or high-pressure sodium lighting system, just to give the plant that extra growth boost. As auxiliary LED grow light kits use the smaller UFO LED 90 watts lights. This will provide your plant the specific light color spectrum it desires in the flowering stage, thus producing extra growth. Nevertheless, it is possible to use LED lights for your entire grow operation if you go with a 300W to a 600W panel. They are low maintenance and very discrete because these panels leave no thermal footprint. Take into account that a good quality large 300W LED panel is going to take out of your pocket at least $1,000. If you are looking for something cheaper, it won’t give you the production yield you’d want. Let us know about your experiences with LED grow lights in the comment section below.
