Tropicallvr

I guess LED grow lights are coming on the market. I'm not sure how good they are, but definatly cheaper on energy than any other light, and most likely just as good or better the the tube florescent types.
Here's one link of many googled- LED Grow Lights - HomeGrownLights.com

mskitty38583

and they say it will save more money using them....wonder what the comparision to the compack flo. that i use. might be interesting

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AllenF

I didn't see anywhere that they provided full spectrum light. Did you?

Very expensive compared with a 15 watt CFC natural light bulb at $6, a socket and extension cord at $4.

I think that their market will be for compact uses until someone develops a LED that is 10 x as bright even if it is 10 x as big.

Allen

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magicgreen

Looks interesting! Iam interested in growing one of my nannas in some type of hydroponic or aquaponic set-up.
Going to have to research those lights more. The color is pretty.LOL Thanks for the info.

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Richard

The HGL systems offer tremendous energy savings at a tremendous price -- so high, that I doubt you would ever recoup the cost of purchase. One indoor banana would require a $700 to $1200 (US) expenditure.

One 100W high-end system (Procyon 100) will not be sufficient for fruiting banana plants, you will need two -- each placed off-center and pointing back down towards the base of the plant. To use the 3 Watt single wavelength bulbs, you need arrays of them: for every 2 630nm bulbs you need about 4 660nm bulbs, 5 455nm bulbs, and 6 470nm bulbs. That's a total of 17 bulbs in one array, but you will need at least 2 arrays for one banana plant or equivalent vegetative growth.

Their approach to light source is based on combining 4 specific wavelengths (455nm, 470nm, 630nm, 660nm) in one system. In doing so, they minimally approximate the wavelengths most used by common ornamentals. There is nothing in the lamps to diffuse frequency, so the output is very specific and misses some desirable sub-dominant wavelengths. The transmitted wavelengths will interact with each other to produce a small amount of additional wavelengths, but these will be outside the photo-active range of plants.

I would prefer to own a bulb that utilizes frequency modulation to better approximate the greenish curve shown below. The newer florescent plant light bulbs all do this very well, and very affordably!

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bigdog

Kyle, somebody (a student) did an experiment here on campus with pepper plants and grow lights, for botany class. Actually, there was one group just exposed to greenhouse light. The other two were a metal halide setup and an LED setup. I don't know the final results of his experiment, but I made sure all of the groups were not drying out, so I saw them every other day or so. The LED-grown plants looked phenomenal! Yes, the lights are outrageously expensive, but I think they last forever. The difference between the LED plants and the metal halide group was incredible. And the amount of light they give off just doesn't look like near enough light to grow plants!

Mustang

I've been wondering about those as well. I got some gro lights just before xmas, and in the end, I decided to go for Envirolights due to initial cost. I also hadn't heard of any reports on how good the LEDs were, compared to other lighting. Maybe when they come down in price, I may try some.