Hello.
I've been installing and runner a 120W(90 actual) LED grow light, to replace a 250W HPS(280W actual) in a closet,
the first thing i noted was a dramatic drop in heat and in water evaporation.
Thinking out loud !
This is a blackbody radiation chart, with this we can see how hot something has to be to emit visible light,
looking at the chart I'm guessing that the core of a HPS is between 5000 and 6000°K hot.
Anything that is hot is emitting infrared radiation in the band from 740nm to 3000nm
View attachment 2170962
So anything above 740nm is wasted heat and a 5500°K hot object put out allot of this radiation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared
"Much of the energy from the Sun arrives on Earth in the form of infrared radiation.
Sunlight at zenith provides an
irradiance of just over 1
kilowatt per square meter at sea level.
Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is
visible light, and 32 watts is
ultraviolet radiation."
So this is the numbers for a perfect blackbody radiation source.
Hot sodium gas i guess is not emitting in a perfect blackbody spectrum but has it own spectral lines.
I think this is what is behind the HPS's spectrum, but in the most charts we see, the real IR radiation is not shown.
On this chart witch goes a bit into the IR, some small peaks are visible, and it look like it could increase in the lower area.
So a 600W HPS puts out 300 Watts of heat if it was a efficient nuclear furness, but it's not instead we use moving
electrons to create friction and heat. So i would not be chocked to find out that a 600W HPS puts out 100W of IR and 80 watts of visible light.
Going even further with that 80 watts of visible light, and think about what can a plant use of that 50% 40 watts maybe.
600W of electricity becomes 80 watts of light.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_management_of_high-power_LEDs
"Most of the electricity in an LED becomes heat rather than light (about 70% heat and 30% light)."
So using a 600W LED we should get 180 watts of light, furthermore the spectrum of the LED can be
pinpointed to the right spectrum with absolutely no wasted green light.
Rass.