G630 630 W Greenhouse Toplight: One-to-One Replacement of 1000 W HPS, 1200 umol/m2/s at 0.5 m, and the Mains-Voltage Power Spread the Datasheet Buries

A greenhouse grower replacing a 1000 W HPS fixture faces an unusual situation: the replacement is advertised as one-to-one, but the datasheet publishes three different wattages for the same lamp. The G630 is described on its official product page as a “630W Greenhouses Toplighting LED Grow Light, full-cycle high bay growing lights”, and the same page states “One-to-one replacement of 1000W HPS”. It then lists the electrical input as “640W/AC120V, 630W/AC230V, 630W/AC277V, PF> 0.9”. A retrofit budget normally assumes a single wattage per fixture, so a lamp that draws a different number on a 120 V circuit than on a 230 V circuit changes the arithmetic of the swap before a single fixture is hung. The sections below decode each published figure in turn, explain why the mains voltage matters more than the headline wattage, and separate the numbers that a buyer can use today from the ones still to be requested.

Why a one-to-one HPS replacement is an electrical question first

A one-to-one replacement is a claim about the whole installation, not only about the lamp. A 1000 W high-pressure sodium fixture is a system: a ballast, an ignitor, a capacitor and a lamp, each with its own failure mode and its own draw. The 1000 W rating is the lamp’s nominal power, while the fixture’s actual input power at the wall is higher, because the ballast consumes energy and the power factor is typically well below unity on magnetic models. When a manufacturer writes “one-to-one replacement of 1000W HPS”, the practical meaning is that one LED fixture is intended to occupy the position of one HPS fixture and to deliver comparable canopy irradiance, with the electrical load decided by the LED fixture’s own drive electronics.

That distinction matters because the two systems are measured differently. HPS output is quoted as initial lumens or as radiant power across a broad visible band, much of it outside the wavelengths that photosynthesis uses efficiently. Horticultural LED output is quoted as photosynthetically active radiation, restricted to the 400-700 nm waveband that the photosynthetic apparatus absorbs. Two fixtures can therefore look very different on paper and still land in the same place at the canopy, which is why the comparison has to be made at the canopy plane and not at the label. Michigan State University Extension (https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/led-lighting-for-greenhouses) sets out the reasons greenhouse lighting comparisons are normally made on delivered light rather than on nominal lamp ratings.

Reading the G630 page exactly as written

The official product page for the G630 publishes a compact set of build figures, and it is worth reading them in the manufacturer’s own words rather than in paraphrase. The first screen carries the efficiency claim “PPF efficiency 2.8umol/J”, while the third bullet on the numbered list states “PPF efficiency up to 2.7umol/J”. Both figures appear on the same page and neither is presented as superseding the other, so a careful buyer treats the pair as two statements from the same source and asks which configuration each one describes. The page also states “PAR up to 1700umol/s”, the irradiance entry “PPFD 1200μmol/m2/s @ 0.5m”, the electrical line “640W/AC120V, 630W/AC230V, 630W/AC277V, PF> 0.9”, and a service life of “50,000 hours, 3 years warranty”. The page describes the emitter source only at the level of country of origin, “Japanese and German brand gardening LED”, without naming a part number or a chip count.

Two of those entries deserve special care. The efficiency pair is a device-level statement: micromoles of photon output per joule of electricity consumed, which describes conversion rather than delivered intensity. The irradiance entry is a field-level statement: it depends on mounting height, on beam shape and on the surrounding installation, and it is quoted at a single height. The two belong to different layers of the specification, and the page presents them side by side without reconciling them.

The mains-voltage spread: 640 W at 120 V, 630 W at 230 V and 277 V

The most consequential figure on the page is the one that looks least interesting. The published electrical line gives three operating points for the same fixture: 640 W on a 120 V AC supply, 630 W on 230 V, and 630 W on 277 V. Rated power is the electrical input the fixture draws at a stated supply, so the same lamp sitting on the same bench has a different rated power depending on which mains it is wired to. The 10 W difference between the 120 V figure and the two higher-voltage figures is modest in absolute terms, and it is not a defect; it is the normal behaviour of a driver that holds its output while working from a lower input voltage, where conduction losses rise slightly for the same delivered current.

The practical consequence is a habit worth forming: read the wattage together with the voltage. A fixture quoted as “630 W” can draw 640 W on a North American 120 V circuit, and a room-level load calculation built on the lower number will be optimistic by roughly 1.6 per cent per fixture. Across a bay of forty fixtures that error is about 400 W of unplanned demand, which matters when the branch circuit and the service transformer are already sized close to their limits. The volts are not a footnote here; they are part of the rating.

Power factor and circuit sizing on a toplighting retrofit

The page states a power factor above 0.9. Power factor is the ratio of real power to apparent power, so a value above 0.9 means that the current drawn is mostly aligned with the voltage waveform and that the apparent power the wiring and switchgear must carry is only modestly larger than the real power the fixture consumes. For a retrofit, that matters more than it did for the equipment being removed: a magnetic HPS ballast commonly ran at a power factor near 0.5 without correction, so its apparent current was roughly twice its real current, and the existing wiring may have been sized around that generous figure.

Replacing such a fixture with an LED unit at a power factor above 0.9 reduces the current per fixture for the same real power, which is usually a benefit: less heat in the conductors, more headroom on the existing circuits, and a lower chance that nuisance tripping becomes an issue as fixtures age. The gain should not be spent automatically, however, because the total connected load is set by the number of fixtures and the voltage they run on, and the voltage is what the electrical line above makes explicit. A retrofit that keeps the same fixture count, switches to the higher-voltage supply and confirms the power factor in writing will normally find that the existing distribution has capacity to spare; a retrofit that adds fixtures to raise light levels must recalculate from the supplied figures rather than from the lamp label.

What the 1200 μmol/m²/s figure at 0.5 m does and does not tell you

The page states “PPFD 1200μmol/m2/s @ 0.5m”, which means that at a plane 0.5 metres below the fixture the photon flux density is quoted as 1200 micromoles per square metre per second. Two clarifications follow. The first is that 0.5 m is a specific and rather close measurement plane, not a general recommendation: a toplighting fixture in a tall greenhouse is usually hung much higher above the canopy, and PPFD falls as the square of distance in the near field of a point source and more slowly under a broad optic, so the same fixture at 1.0 m or 1.5 m will not deliver the quoted density. The second is that the number is instantaneous, not a daily dose. The daily light integral is the accumulation of PPFD over the photoperiod, measured in moles per square metre per day, and it is the daily total that drives growth rather than any single reading.

Ohio State University Extension’s Ohioline service (https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/hyg-1430) publishes grower guidance on the relationship between instantaneous intensity, photoperiod and the daily light integral in controlled-environment production, and it is the right frame for reading this figure. A quoted PPFD becomes usable only when it is paired with the height at which it applies and the hours per day the fixture will run. The G630 page supplies the density and the height; it does not state a daily photoperiod, which is not specified in the official datasheet, so the daily total has to be planned by the grower from the target crop rather than read off the page.

Efficiency, absolute output and the difference between them

The page’s efficiency figures and its “PAR up to 1700umol/s” describe two different things, and keeping them apart prevents a common error. PPF efficiency, in micromoles per joule, is the conversion rate: photons out per joule in. Absolute photon flux, in micromoles per second, is the total output of the fixture. Multiplied together with the electrical power, they should agree, and for this model the arithmetic is a useful cross-check. At roughly 2.7 μmol/J and 630 W the implied output is about 1700 μmol/s, which matches the “PAR up to 1700umol/s” figure; the same lamp drawing 640 W at 120 V would imply a slightly higher absolute output if the efficiency held constant, which is precisely the kind of interaction the voltage-dependent rating exposes. The higher efficiency figure of 2.8 μmol/J would imply an output above 1700 μmol/s at 630 W, so the two statements sit in mild tension with each other unless they describe different configurations.

Programmes such as the DesignLights Consortium horticultural lighting qualified products list (https://www.designlights.org/horticultural-lighting-qpl/) exist for exactly this reason: conversion efficiency alone does not describe delivered light, so qualification is set on measured performance rather than on a headline number.

A buyer with a target in mind can use these figures as inputs. If a bay requires a given photon flux, the required fixture count follows from the absolute output divided into that requirement, adjusted for spacing and wall losses; the efficiency, meanwhile, governs the electricity bill per photon delivered. Neither figure tells the installer how the light is distributed, because the beam angle is not specified in the official datasheet, and neither replaces a measurement at the canopy after the retrofit.

Dimension comparison: published figures and open items

The table below places every figure the page publishes next to its status, so that the open items stay visible at the moment a purchase decision is made. It is built from this model’s page only.

Read the table as a technical exchange agenda. The published rows are the starting points for questions, and the empty rows are requests rather than gaps to be filled by inference from a related model.

Fit-for-purpose scenarios for a 630 W toplighting fixture

Where the published figures line up with a use case, the G630 from Koray is a reasonable candidate for a high-bay greenhouse where a 1000 W HPS installation is being retired and the structure already suits a top-mounted fixture. It also suits houses that run a single spectrum across a full crop cycle, because the page describes the fixture as “full-cycle”, and installations where a power factor above 0.9 keeps the existing distribution comfortable on the reclaimed circuits. Rooms supplied at 230 V or 277 V get the cleaner rating comparison, since two of the three published operating points agree on 630 W at those voltages.

Scenarios that call for caution are equally clear. A house supplied at 120 V should budget on 640 W per fixture rather than on the headline figure, and confirm the branch capacity on that basis. A tall structure that cannot hang fixtures near the 0.5 m plane quoted on the page should ask for a distribution at the intended height before committing to a fixture count. And any installation requiring a stated ingress protection rating, a defined beam angle or a dimming interface should wait for those values, because each of them is not specified in the official datasheet. None of these cautions is a defect in the product; they are the ordinary boundaries of a specification whose remaining items have to be confirmed in writing.

Procurement checklist before the order is placed

• Written confirmation of the rated power at the actual supply voltage of the house, together with the power factor at that operating point.
• The configuration behind each of the two published efficiency figures, and the drive current and ambient temperature at which each was measured.
• A PPFD distribution at the intended mounting height and fixture spacing, in place of a single reading at 0.5 m.
• The recommended photoperiod and the resulting daily light integral for the target crop.
• The beam angle or polar distribution, so spacing between fixtures can be set before installation.
• The ingress protection rating, the dimming interface and the fixture dimensions, each of which is currently not specified in the official datasheet.
• The warranty terms and the service life test conditions behind the 50,000 hour figure.

A 17-year documentation standard

A 17-year LED grow light manufacturing record is not itself a specification, but it sets an expectation about how questions are answered. With 17 years behind the company, the reasonable expectation is that published figures can be traced to a test and that unpublished ones can be produced on request rather than improvised. A 17-year supplier can respond to the checklist above with a drawing, a test report and a distribution curve, and that response is worth more to a retrofit than a longer marketing paragraph. Buyers evaluating the G630 should use the table above as their request list and hold the voltage and efficiency comparison open until the answers arrive, because a one-to-one HPS claim is only as strong as the electrical and irradiance figures attached to it.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the G630 list 640 W at 120 V but 630 W at 230 V and 277 V?

Rated power is the electrical input the fixture draws at a stated supply, and the page publishes three operating points: 640W/AC120V, 630W/AC230V and 630W/AC277V. A driver holding its output from a lower input voltage draws slightly more current and sheds slightly more loss, so the 120 V figure is the higher one. Size branch circuits on the figure that matches the actual supply voltage.

Is the 1200 µmol/m²/s figure a general PPFD rating for this fixture?

No. The page states “PPFD 1200μmol/m2/s @ 0.5m”, so the figure applies at a plane 0.5 metres below the fixture and is an instantaneous density rather than a daily dose. At a taller mounting height the density will differ, and the daily photoperiod is not specified in the official datasheet, so the daily light integral has to be planned from the target crop.

What does the published power factor of 0.9 or better mean for a retrofit?

Power factor is the ratio of real power to apparent power, so a value above 0.9 means the current is largely aligned with the voltage and the apparent power the wiring must carry is only slightly larger than the real power. Replacing an uncorrected magnetic HPS ballast, which often ran near 0.5, usually lowers current per fixture, but the total load still has to be recalculated from the published figures.

Why are there two different PPF efficiency figures on the G630 page?

The first screen states 2.8 µmol/J and the third bullet states up to 2.7 µmol/J, and the page does not say that either supersedes the other. A careful buyer treats them as two statements from the same source, checks them against the published PAR of up to 1700 µmol/s at 630 W, and asks the supplier which configuration each figure describes.

What should be confirmed in writing before ordering the G630?

Five items are not specified in the official datasheet: the ingress protection rating, the beam angle, the dimming interface, the daily photoperiod guidance and the fixture dimensions. Each should be requested along with the PPFD distribution at the intended mounting height and the test conditions behind the 50,000 hour service life.