• Here is a link to the full explanation: https://rollitup.org/t/welcome-back-did-you-try-turning-it-off-and-on-again.1104810/

New LEDs: Are they overpowering them just for the sales pitch?

J

jaked3800

Well-Known Member
Im looking to outfit a 36 light flower room and trying to find my best option for LED lighting. I currently run some of the pre 2021 HLG scorpion diablos as well as 2 of the 2022+ Scorpioin diablos, one regular and one "X" spectrum. And to be honest I feel like 750 wats per 5x5 is the absolute max for the best product with solid yeilds atleast in my set up growing in organic bio bizz in peat moss and thats with CO2 supplimantation at 1200-1400.

Im seeing these new lights that are 900-1500 watts of led. It just seems rediculous or am I missing something? I'm tempted to swithch over to Mammoths new spectrum mostly on the recomendation of a couple growers and they have 680 and 860 watts. They have some far red in them which ive never played around with so will prob test one before I commit to a full build out.

Whats everyones thoughts on how they keep ramping up wattage. Also any feedback on Mammoth lights vs others or far red being incorporated into the main light? My worry is that my 7-14 day veg might be affected negativly the FR.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
First, let's define terms. Right in this thread we see people saying "overpowered" AND "underpowered" for exactly the same thing, which is running LED chips well under their maximum capacity. For the record, this is UNDER powering the chips, which is a good thing for performance, efficiency and longevity!

Second, nearly every LED chip in the market, be it low power, mid power, high power, single diode or COB LED, have at least two efficiency curves associated with them. One is that the lower percentage of full power the chip is driven at, the more efficient it is. This is a CURVE, meaning that the most gains are seen when dropping from full power with reducing returns the lower this percentage gets. Going from 100% of maximum output to 75% will gain more efficiency than going from 75% to 50%... But if you're running your chips at 50% you do get both gains.

The other curve is a lot flatter and more constant and that's temperature; the cooler you run a chip, the better the efficiency. Spectrum output doesn't change much; it tends to lose mostly infrared and red because it's running cooler. Also, longevity really climbs when chips are under driven, aka run softly.

Finally, running a chip cooler increases its forward voltage, allowing it to accept more Watts when it's kept cool.

The above reasons are why quantum boards with those big flat heat dissipating boards are very efficient lights. It's a great design.

Class dismissed!
 
thumper60

thumper60

Well-Known Member
jaked3800 said:
Im looking to outfit a 36 light flower room and trying to find my best option for LED lighting. I currently run some of the pre 2021 HLG scorpion diablos as well as 2 of the 2022+ Scorpioin diablos, one regular and one "X" spectrum. And to be honest I feel like 750 wats per 5x5 is the absolute max for the best product with solid yeilds atleast in my set up growing in organic bio bizz in peat moss and thats with CO2 supplimantation at 1200-1400.

Im seeing these new lights that are 900-1500 watts of led. It just seems rediculous or am I missing something? I'm tempted to swithch over to Mammoths new spectrum mostly on the recomendation of a couple growers and they have 680 and 860 watts. They have some far red in them which ive never played around with so will prob test one before I commit to a full build out.

Whats everyones thoughts on how they keep ramping up wattage. Also any feedback on Mammoth lights vs others or far red being incorporated into the main light? My worry is that my 7-14 day veg might be affected negativly the FR.
Click to expand...
Iam running 700w 8 bar lights at 90% on a 5x5 an pulling 3plus theres no need for any more light than that IMO not sure whats up with mammoth but Iam seeing used 880s for 400-500 an they just came out?
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
@jaked3800 when you say you're outfitting a 36 light room, are you talking about 36 HID lights? Maybe if you just gave us the dimensions we could be more help?
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Matter of priorities and grow style really. While 30w per square foot of HLG diablo in a tent should give great flower there are a few considerations that may warrant more wattage:
- lower efficiency lights will mean you need more watts. Many of the cheapo lightmakers and even the more well known are fudging their numbers somewhat: quoting efficiency numbers at dimmed wattage or nominal current of their diodes or just quoting efficiency at board level and not including driver efficiency in the calculations. Its been tested here on the forum as around 10% missing efficiency for some major brands.
- tent vrs openspace: a single light or row in an openspace; without crosslighting you have a bunch of light going to the walls.
- a well run hydrosetup with perfect climate can usually handle more light than you would think, especially if comparing with soil/organics.
- lighting strategies: some like to be able to turn their light levels up during part of the grow even when total light DLI remain around the same as a stable 30w per foot would give; say ramping up to 40-50w at midday while leaving mornings and evenings at 20w. Or pushing extra light at budset while giving less light during stretch to avoid too tall plants.
- g/w or g/area: if you want to max your g/w lower watts per foot is preferable but if youre constrained for space you may want to get as much bud as you can from each foot, to hell with watts consumed.
 
OneHitDone

OneHitDone

Well-Known Member
ttystikk said:
First, let's define terms. Right in this thread we see people saying "overpowered" AND "underpowered" for exactly the same thing, which is running LED chips well under their maximum capacity. For the record, this is UNDER powering the chips, which is a good thing for performance, efficiency and longevity!

Second, nearly every LED chip in the market, be it low power, mid power, high power, single diode or COB LED, have at least two efficiency curves associated with them. One is that the lower percentage of full power the chip is driven at, the more efficient it is. This is a CURVE, meaning that the most gains are seen when dropping from full power with reducing returns the lower this percentage gets. Going from 100% of maximum output to 75% will gain more efficiency than going from 75% to 50%... But if you're running your chips at 50% you do get both gains.

The other curve is a lot flatter and more constant and that's temperature; the cooler you run a chip, the better the efficiency. Spectrum output doesn't change much; it tends to lose mostly infrared and red because it's running cooler. Also, longevity really climbs when chips are under driven, aka run softly.

Finally, running a chip cooler increases its forward voltage, allowing it to accept more Watts when it's kept cool.

The above reasons are why quantum boards with those big flat heat dissipating boards are very efficient lights. It's a great design.

Class dismissed!
Click to expand...
To expand on the great info you have laid out here - I think some are confusing "dimmer" under-powered diodes with a properly designed light.
A high end light will be under driving the diodes even when ran at 100% driver power output.
Buying a cheap special and turning it down is just simply not the same quality of a product... :peace:
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
OneHitDone said:
To expand on the great info you have laid out here - I think some are confusing "dimmer" under-powered diodes with a properly designed light.
A high end light will be under driving the diodes even when ran at 100% driver power output.
Buying a cheap special and turning it down is just simply not the same quality of a product... :peace:
Click to expand...
In general driver efficiency drops the further away from full power you get and when you get close to 0 dim any efficiency you gained in lower dc drive current is eaten up by the driver running really inefficiently. TEKNIK showed this in a few tests. Is the same true about midrange? Not sure but my guess that its close enough.
 
OneHitDone

OneHitDone

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
In general driver efficiency drops the further away from full power you get and when you get close to 0 dim any efficiency you gained in lower dc drive current is eaten up by the driver running really inefficiently. TEKNIK showed this in a few tests. Is the same true about midrange? Not sure but my guess that its close enough.
Click to expand...
That would suggest that the proper lighting strategy is to design for the driver to be ran at 100% while having a sufficient quantity of led's and proper circuit design that is "under driving" the diodes themselves with the driver going full blast.
That was the point I was making. Brand XYZ Amazon led turned down is not the same as an efficient design. :peace:
 
J

jaked3800

Well-Known Member
thumper60 said:
Iam running 700w 8 bar lights at 90% on a 5x5 an pulling 3plus theres no need for any more light than that IMO not sure whats up with mammoth but Iam seeing used 880s for 400-500 an they just came out?
Click to expand...
I wonder if the 880s are the old spectrum from mammoth, I think the actual lights look the same.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
OneHitDone said:
To expand on the great info you have laid out here - I think some are confusing "dimmer" under-powered diodes with a properly designed light.
A high end light will be under driving the diodes even when ran at 100% driver power output.
Buying a cheap special and turning it down is just simply not the same quality of a product... :peace:
Click to expand...
An excellent point. Those in the know... Know. Newbs may think chips are chips and running any of them softly bets the same gains. This is not so!
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
jaked3800 said:
Yeah I was specifying led, the room is approx 38x39 with 10.5ft clear hight. Im planning on having 6x 5ft rolling benches with 6 lights per bench.
Click to expand...
Sounds basically like a two car garage.

I'm trying to visualize these rolling benches; are they 5' wide and run the length of the space? In that case six of them means 30' across with an extra 8 feet or so for aisles. Do I have that right?
 
J

jaked3800

Well-Known Member
ttystikk said:
Sounds basically like a two car garage.

I'm trying to visualize these rolling benches; are they 5' wide and run the length of the space? In that case six of them means 30' across with an extra 8 feet or so for aisles. Do I have that right?
Click to expand...
Larger than a typical 2-car garage, it would be closer to 3-4x that in area. And yes the rolling benches will take up 30' but will only have 3-4 ft of space for isles after I build in the partition walls. Then I will have about 6-8 ft of space at the one end of all the benches.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
jaked3800 said:
Larger than a typical 2-car garage, it would be closer to 3-4x that in area. And yes the rolling benches will take up 30' but will only have 3-4 ft of space for isles after I build in the partition walls. Then I will have about 6-8 ft of space at the one end of all the benches.
Click to expand...
You are correct; this space is basically four two car garages. Is it all for flower or do you need to partition some for veg?

How's your power situation? How many amps@volts do you have access to?
 
J

jaked3800

Well-Known Member
ttystikk said:
You are correct; this space is basically four two car garages. Is it all for flower or do you need to partition some for veg?

How's your power situation? How many amps@volts do you have access to?
Click to expand...
Those dimensions are specificaly for inside of the partitioned flower space. That is walll what I have to flower in. I have about 6ksq ft total and am just starting with this one flower room and will be planing a veg and dry room aswell.
 
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