Just cause you can get the hid closer doesn't mean you should. 1000w's should be 18 inches away at the closest
otherwise they will bleach plants too. I have 2 buddies that run 10 1000's together. They're lights are a foot away. They cool the hoods very well. They bleach the shit out of their plants. They like the white look... They are idiots.
quality led put out very little heat. Less than the induction. Where china leds put out alot more heat...
Redcarpetmunches epistar is Chinese. They are made in shenzen china. Cree and Nichia are the only U.S led companies. Osram is Chinese but its a sister company to Sylvania which is in Germany.
Only thing with me personally, and this is the full reason for my bias, is I very often have no choice but to have lamps pretty close. I love my hazes etc, and I am going to be running a NL5 x OG as a Gage test soon which I know is going to try go through the roof lol. I'm a peculiar fella with peculiar tastes I know.
Thing is I HAVE to try LED to have a REAL opinion. So far they are more reservations than opinions really. In the end, you can't knock it till you have tried it! I haven't so I should really shut up about it.
I am loving the new Area 51 LED panels in all the grows and reviews I am reading. Looks like a solid investment. Makes HID look like a 9v torch. My only REAL reservation is with their directionality. Shove HID into a photon prison like a tent or a well built and lined room, and you reap the rewards. It is easy to harnass ALL that light. cb420 pulled 1.7 pounds off a single 1000w lamp. That's pushing 1.5 grams per watt. So if tweaked HID can kick.
With LED it is all going one way. But this aspect of LED is getting better the more jacked the lenses are getting. Exciting stuff for sure, and my hat is off to the early adopters smoothing out the edges for us future users.
To me the amount of heat they put out is not much of an issue, in winter it is cool enough to run HID no hassle, in summer the environment itself creates temps the plants don't like nevermind the lighting, so vents and climate control are jacked as can be anyhow. Combine that with flowering at night and temps are well managed. My vents clear the room in around 15 seconds so it quickly reaches ambient outside temps if I don't switch a fan off or what. In winter I use a quarter of the vents. My AC is running during the DARK period when outside temps are 110 so the ladies can have a cold sleep. At this point, their dark period is warmer than their light period the AC can't keep up.
Night is nice and cool most of the time. But I can tell you, inverted day/night temps FREAK the hell out of a plant. Sheeeuuuut. They are NOT happy. I almost feel like culling them to end their suffering. It is horrible. No more summer indoors. Started seeing the bananas yesterday anyhow. Poor things, been hardcore.