About Photon Efficacy, spectrum, PPFD, reliability, safety and others

 

What’ the best LED grow light ? My definition is:

Effective（Good efficacy for the plants）

Energy Conservation（High PPE and high PPFD in same power）

Safe and Reliable（Meet the safety requirments around the world）

Long life（Use long life span elements）

Human perceived comfort（Provide a human friendly working environment, No Harmful, Flicker free, protect your eyes）

 

  1. Effective, the most important includes two points, a good plant light recipe spectrum, suitable or slightly higher than the actual need for PPFD:

Spectrum: The light recipe of plants. Every plant lamp manufacturer claims that its own spectrum is the most effective. Here I want to talk about the good spectrum and the not-so-good spectrum (at least the extremely red light 660nm). The planting effect difference is less than 10%. There is no most effective spectrum now. The quality of the spectrum depends on what you need, you grow vegetables and need a good taste, then you can add some UV purple light, if you need to change the flowering cycle, you may need to add some far red FR730 . A good spectrum, I think, should be adjustable, and it should contain multiple adjustable channels, UV channel, blue and white light channel, red light channel, far red light channel, so that we can according to plant species, plant Adjust the spectrum reasonably at different stages of planting. Of course, it seems a bit difficult to adjust the spectrum.

 

Regarding the spectrum, I would like to discuss it separately with you later, so I won’t say more here.

 

PPFD: In fact, PPFD is the most important data in plant lights. It is more important than the spectrum. Only a suitable PPFD can have a good harvest. Generally, indoor planting is related to light, that is, insufficient light or insufficient power.

Generally speaking, the average PPFD for leafy vegetable planting requires 250umol/m2/s, hemp planting seedling stage requires 150umol/m2/s, vegetative growth period requires 400-600umol/m2/s, flowering and blooming harvest period requires 600-1200umol/s The light of m2/s, the vegetative growth period and flowering period of cannabis, require additional carbon dioxide. The growth stages of tomatoes and peppers are basically the same as hemp. Adding carbon dioxide can also increase production.

 

  1. High efficiency and energy saving:

The lighting effect of LED plant lighting must reach 2.7umol/J, but almost all plant lights claim to be above 2.7umol/J. This requires us to analyze and identify them. Generally, plant lights produced by famous brands have higher credibility. If it is not a brand, we need to know the brand of LED lamp beads (preferably with a specific LED model) and the number of LED lamp beads, which can also help identify the credibility of the light effect. Generally speaking, the same LED is used For lamp bead models, the more LED lamp beads, the higher the efficiency.

 

  1. Safe and reliable:

In fact, safety should be the first priority. Lamps should meet the safety requirements of all countries in the world. In addition to meeting safety requirements, they also need to be reliable and reliable to ensure long-term operation. LED lights will also generate heat, and temperature rise is also an important Indicators, too high temperature will seriously affect the life of the plant light, and the heat dissipation capacity is also an important indicator of the plant light.

 

  1. Long life:

As mentioned above, low temperature rise is a way to ensure long life. Use good components, especially power supplies, which are relatively easy to damage. You should try to use brand-name power LED plant lights, such as Meanwell power supply; and lamp beads, You should also choose to use the plant lights of major international brands, such as Osram, Nichia, Toyoda Gosei, Samsung, Seoul and other brand lamp beads.

  1. Human perception of comfort:

This can be said to have nothing to do with plants, but the plant planting environment may also be our temporary work environment. This place also needs human-friendly light. Under this kind of light, we can also see the growth status of the plant and discover diseases and insect pests in time. And other issues. For plant growing areas where UV lamps are used, the UV lamps should be turned off before entering the plant growing areas.

 

Having said a lot above, what is a good LED plant light? It’s best only when it fits you.

Next time, I will discuss with you, how to choose a good plant LED grow light?

How to choose a suitable plant light, the premise is your planting place? What is the planting area and what plants to grow.

 

For indoor planting, light is an important variable, and other growth environments are also critical, such as: ventilation, temperature, humidity, soil or nutrient solution, pests and diseases, etc. If the lamp you buy has the above 5 advantages, the effect of planting No, it may be caused by other reasons, so I won’t discuss it here.