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LED Grow Lights Au |
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Various types of LED Grow lights
This category contains just the LED growlights no stands just the lights.
The choices regarding LED growlights is becoming greater and greater. Which is great news for the indoor gardener, but it can also get a bit confusing and making a decision can be difficult.
LEDs Power rating e.g. 1W vs 2W & 3W
In the world of LED Grow Lights, the most common LED chips are 1W and 3W diodes. The labelling of these diodes however, confuses most people as they expect the name of the product to match its power consumption & therefor the light intensity. With LEDs however, this is not always the case. The wattage of a LED is determined by the current (amps) they are driven at, with 1W LEDs driven at 350mA, and 3W LEDs driven at 700mA. Despite the fact that 3W LEDs are driven at double the amperage of a 1W, they normally consume only 2W of actual power, LED manufacturers have labelled them as 3W. It is important to note that anything labelled a 3W LED, is by all intents and purposes a 2W LED. However 3W LEDs are best driven at 600mA, or about 1.6W per LED. The reason the LEDs are not driven at 700mA as they are rated, is that it reduces the efficiency, increases heat, and reduces lifespan. At 550-600mA the 3W LEDs test 5% more efficient in terms of lumens per watt than at 700mA, & run up to 15 degrees cooler, and last much longer. However having said that 8 months of past and many companies are now running these at 700 mA due to better cooling technologies and claiming no loss of performance.
Be careful however, of companies using 3W LEDs to trick you with their marketing.
Summary:-
A 2W is approx. 1.5 x as bright as a 1W (2W LEDs are best driven at 500mA)
A 3W is approx. 1.7 to 2 x as bright as a 1W. (as 1W is more likely 0.9W)
What we look for is value for money, reliability and choices with regard to different growing criteria. So if you look at the lights that we are offering there are several groups, but as you will see some of them overlap.
The most common LED grow lights, eg the UFO series consists of 1, 2, 3 watt LEDs, which have a standard internal lens of 120° i.e. wide-angle. The biggest advantage of these lights, is generally their price.
Another group of light are those that use lenses to focus the original 120° spread into a small beam therefore increasing the intensity of the light. The obvious advantage of these lights is that there is no wasted light going to the sides and the light that the plant's underneath receive has more energy i.e. higher intensity, however there is a small amount of loss as no lenses perfect.
Another group of light, which may or may not have additional lenses, is categorised by not having a fan and therefore having the power supply mounted remotely. The no noise operation and the lighter weight of this type of light, makes them extremely flexible, they also have a higher level of water resistance, so they are safer. These features make them extremely versatile when growing in your living area & small spaces.
There is another group of lights that offer the ability to dim the LEDs, some of these even offer the ability to dim selectively in different groups of wavelengths that match the various stage of plant growth.
There is another group that uses a new 5 W LED that actually incorporates 2 different wavelengths or 2 LEDs in the one chip which allows for good mixing of these 2 frequencies.
There is another group of lights which have a large group of LEDs placed close together on the same circuit board, similar to the previous example but in much larger numbers, these are called COB (Chip On circuit Board), what this means, apart from savings in weight and space (reduced shipping costs), is that all the colours from the different LEDs are very evenly mixed. They generally come without lenses but some of them use reflector panels to concentrate the light, which are claimed to be more efficient than lenses, ie no losses due to passing through another medium.
We expect this type of light to become very popular in the future due to the cost savings and the ability to evenly mix LED colours together also 15% increases in light intensities are being claimed over similarly configured lights.
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