if not I'm back to lower yields with the LED's.
I blew it up with DE. I wouldn't be surprised at all if I could smoke an LED grow with a DE. That's not what this is about, though. You have to look at it from the big picture. What did you pull with the DE, now what did you pull with the LED.
Here is the real way to look at it:
Say you pulled x with the 1000w DE
and you pulled y with the LED at 500w.
If the yield is more than
half of the DE you are ahead, and here is why.
You were already spending the money on the electricity to run the DE, right?
Now replace those same watts with LED all 1000 of them.
Now do a grow.
In theory you should pull more per watt than the DE.
Here is the thing though. It all comes down to the grower, not the light.
AFTER you can hit the light's potential it is time to start splitting hairs for efficiency within the LEDs.
That brings us to the now.
Most growers don't have the skills to max out a light, but still they want more. So they pay for more to be able to get bigger yields lazily that they could have otherwise gotten with some growing skills.
IMO, it is more about the grower, and less about the light.
I have yet to see a single grower that has maxed out any light. Meaning they can't pull a single more gram out of that light. The ceiling. Does anyone know of any that they can link?
Anyway, I see a LOT of growers here and there bitching about 3% this and 4% that efficiency. Spend big bucks to get a better light, when all they had to do in the first place was learn how to grow. Any light that isn't hitting a leaf is a waste of efficiency, correct? I've seen canopies with so much light laying on the ground it's crazy, and they want to bitch about 3%? You've got 40% hitting the floor.