Compact Fluorescent Grow Lights
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Compact fluorescent grow lights produce considerably less heat than the MH or LPS grow lights (virtually no heat is emitted from the bulb itself) but more heat than full sized fluorescent grow lights. They are often a popular choice among home gardeners as they are comparatively inexpensive, readily available, and can be used in regular light sockets.
Compared to regular incandescent lamps rated at the same wattage, compact fluorescent grow lights provide the same amount of visible light. The grow lights use less power and also have a longer rated life.
Compact fluorescent bulbs offer the widest range of color spectrums of any type of grow lights. They are especially good for shelf gardening as their small size and low heat output allows the gardener to place the lights on shelves that are stacked on top of one another. Seedlings and smaller plants are able to thrive in a well thought out indoor garden lit with compact fluorescent lights.
The main disadvantage is their inefficiency when compared to light production abilities of HPS or MH lamps. A bank of compact fluorescent bulbs can use as much power as a single HPS or MH bulb yet not produce the same amount of useable light for your indoor garden.
While they will never rival the output of HID lights, there are several things that can be done to work with this limitation.
- Compact fluorescent grow lights give off 360 degrees of light. By adding a reflector (similar to the MH or HPS lamps) you can direct the light to the area where its needed and maximize your efficient usage of energy and light.
- Plants have varied growing cycles with differing light needs, if you match the lighting to the growing cycle then you will make better use of the available lights.
- Use a higher wattage compact fluorescent grow light, the higher wattage rating will increase the light’s penetration.
- Alternatively, you can increase the penetration of the light by placing it closer to the plants.
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The advantages of LED Grow lights
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As LED grow lights begin to take the market by storm, we must pause and consider the advantages of LED lights versus the conventional glass tube.
Targeted Light Output: Whereas a broad-spectrum plant grow light produce light that isn’t absorbed by the plants, most LED grow lights will only produce colors in the ranges that the plants can use for growth.
Low Heat: Typical grow lights are exceptionally hot. MH and SPS bulbs exceedingly sow. LED grow lights are at best warm to the touch even after hours of operation. This is not only more efficient but safer for both you and the vegetation. Lower heat also results in lower room cooling costs.
Low Voltage: LEDs are low voltage devices and often run on less than twenty volts of electricity. Exact voltage requirements would depend on the specific models but this is not only a cost savings but makes it safer for homes with children and pets
No Ballast: LED grow lights usually weigh far less than a conventional fluorescent system or the metallic vapor systems. This is because the fluorescent and HID systems both generally require a ballast which adds considerably to the weight of the system. Ballasts also require replacement after a period of time as they burn up. This is yet another expensive component that needs replacing not present in LED systems.
Long Life: The lifetime of an LED bulb is 100,000 hours. This close to fifty times longer than the average glass grow light bulb. Having to replace bulbs every year as they begin to shift on the color spectrum adds to the expense of maintaining your grow lights.
No Reflector: Traditional grow lights emit light in all directions. A reflector is used to aim and direct this light back towards the plant to promote growth. Not only are the reflectors usually large and bulky, but they are an added component and cost for the system. With and LED system, the reflectors are integrated into the LEDs themselves, so no additional reflector is needed.
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MH Grow Light Fundamentals
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Metal Halide Lamps (MH) are also gas-discharge lamps and are quite similar to HPS lamps in most aspects. Where as the HPS lamps make use of mercury and sodium, MH lamps make use of a mixture of argon, mercury, and a variety of metal halides. The blend of the halides controls the color temperature and the output colors of the lamp. The internals are also similar to the HPS lamps with the solids residing in an arc tube through which current is passed.
The methods of operation are the same as an HPS lamp so they will not be repeated here. Please read the earlier posting about HPS lamps of you’re curious on the inner workings of the HPS bulb.
The two lamps do differ in several important aspects; efficiency, bulb life, and color rendition.
HPS lamps are approximately 50% more efficient than the MH lamps.
MH lamps have a life expectancy of 10,000 hours as compared to the 20,000+ for the HPS lamps. As they near the end of their own lives they will also exhibit the cycling behavior that HPS lamps do.
Finally, color rendition is much more accurate for the MH lamp. While HPS lamps tend to be in the orange and yellow range, the MH lamps can deliver very clean white light. This makes them not only suitable as plant grow lights, but many salt water aquarium owners tend to favor them over other types of lighting to provide artificial sunlight for their coral reefs.
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HPS Grow Light Fundamentals.
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High-pressure sodium (HPS) grow lights are known as gas-discharge lights. At the core of and HPS bulb is a small glass arc containing mercury and sodium. Electrical voltage passes through the arc causing the gasses inside it to glow. The entire reaction is fairly sensitive to fluctuations in voltage, and so to keep the glass arc from exploding the input power for the entire system is cleaned and regulated via a device known as the ballast.
More specifically, the principles behind the lamp is the following:
• An AC voltage source with an inductive ballast is used to provide the lamp with a clean and constant supply of current.
• The current enters the arc and begins to heat it causing the metals found within it to shift from solid to liquid.
• The current continues to raise the temperature in the arc causing the sodium and mercury to mix together into an amalgam.
• As the temperature increases, the amalgam shifts into a gaseous form and begins to emit light.
• As the pressure in the arc increases from the increase in gaseous metal, the intensity of the light increases.
• Eventually an equilibrium point is reached with the ballast regulating the input current to keep the pressure in the arc at a steady state.
HPS grow lights can have a life expectancy of over 20,000 hours. As they near the end of their life, they begin to exhibit a behavior called “cycling.” This is caused by a change in the amount of sodium in the arc, caused by chemical loss over time, causing the amount of voltage required to keep the light running to increase. The ballast is no longer capable of supplying the lamp sufficient voltage and it shuts itself off to prevent it from destroying itself.
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A guide to grow lights.
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Thanks to major innovations in lighting technology, farmers and home gardeners have been able to move the planting efforts indoors for some time. This was accomplished by the development of various types of full spectrum plant lighting. These lights include incandescent, fluorescent, high intensity discharge (HID), and more recently, the light emitting diode (LED) grow lights.
Incandescent bulbs are typically the cheapest but the lest functional of all of the grow lights available. They do not require the electrical ballasts that the fluorescent and HID lamps require but they have a low lumen output per watt. This would imply that in the longer run an incandescent system is more expensive to run.
Fluorescent grow lights are the next cheapest category of lighting. They offer a more energy efficient lumens to watt ratio, have better color rendition properties, and don’t produce nearly as much heat as incandescent or HID bulbs. Fluorescent grow lights come primarily in two varieties, power compact florescent and T5, both of which are perfectly suitable grow lights.
High intensity discharge lamps are the most efficient lumen per watt bulb however; they also are the most expensive of the grow lights and produce the most heat. Some of the HID lights are deficient in the blue spectrum and typically need some additional supplementation from either sunlight or a bulb that falls within that spectrum range.
HID lights come in several varieties, Metal Halide (MH), and High Pressure Sodium (HPS) are two types. MH lights are usually used during a plants grow cycle, ie when the plant is not blooming or bearing fruit, while the HPS lamps are using during the bloom/fruit cycle.
Finally, LED grow lamps are a recent addition to the field. Cost aside, they have several distinct advantages to the other grow lamps: they produce no heat, they are amazingly efficient, their wavelengths can be tuned as needed for optimal growing, and they have a terrifically long lifespan of nearly 100,000 hours while most other lamps need to replaced between 12 and 18 months.
