ttystikk
Well-Known Member
I'm replacing 5 x 860W CDM lamps, all running on magnetic ballasts, all pulling almost 1100W EACH, with 24 COB LED modules, each of which has 4 CXB3590 3500K CD bin chips being driven at 50W apiece. Due to driver vagaries, each chip is actually getting 54W and the whole module pulls 225W. 225W x 24 = 5400W so I'm not saving any power there!them lights pay for there self all the way, you get years and of strong growing out of a good led light, think of all the hps lights you will go thrugh be for you ever need to get a new led light then add it all up plus a 450w high end led light will kill a 600w hps in a grow while saving on the power bill bill no matter how small a grow room is your saving almost half the cause then if running hps and not buying lights all the time...
My chiller will notice and will likely not have to run as much, saving me something there.
Those 860W CDM lamps put out light with a Color Rendering Index or CRI of 93. Sunlight is 100, so obviously they put out daylight, excellent spectrum if you're matching the Sun.
My problem with them was that while frost and quality certainly improved, yield dropped relative to HPS. Between that and the inefficiency blues, I'm estimating that the watt for watt upgrade to softly driven COB LED will produce about twice as much PAR, and therefore twice the PPfD over the same trellis area.
I'm thinking I'll be pulling two pounders regularly enough to get boring.
Last edited: