So as I understand, this is a forum to show results of your grows with the Solarstorm and Flares. My question is, does anyone from CLW even contribute to this forum? I would actually like to start a discussion about the lights themselves. I would be interested in knowing why they chose to go the route of LEDS at 120 degree angle over say 90 degrees. Possibly provide feedback to improve the lights maybe? Just an idea.

I think THIS section is for the California Lightworks Grower Feedback Program but they might be OK with technical discussions regarding their lights too. I'd say go ahead and start a thread and if this isn't the right place we can move it. I too have a couple of suggestions to make their lights better. I've never grown with one but I have seen one with my own eyes and touched one with my own fingers.

As far as I know SolarStormFan is the only CLW person here and I'm not 100% positive that SSF works there but I think he could be the famous "George" that gives such great service. I'm not sure who I met at the Long Beach Growers Expo last year either.

Suggestions are always welcome!

Without neither confirming nor denying my identity, let me try to address the lens angle question

With any grow light, you care about 2 things:
1- Coverage area
2- Light intensity

There is an inverse correlation between these 2 metrics; the higher the coverage area, the lower the intensity and vice versa.

You can control these metrics by either changing the height of your light above the conopy or (in case of LEDs) by changing the lens angle of your LEDs. The closer you have your light to the plant, the higher the intensity, the smaller the coverage area. The narrower the beam angle of your LEDs (given a constant height), the higher the intensity, the smaller the coverage area.

If you are trying to bloom certain sun loving plants (tomatoes for example), you need high intesity, say 1,000 uMoles/m-2/s. You cannot achieve this intensity with 1W diodes unless you use narrow beam angles (90 degrees or smaller) or get really close to the plant (within a few inches.) A 3W diode does a better job from a distance. But with a set of 5W diodes you can easily achieve this intensity from a distance of 18" even with a 120 degree lens. In fact, any narrower than this is overkill. And you'll have great coverage area at 18" with a 120 degree lens.

Bottom line: With low power diodes, narrow lens angles are critical to achieve high intensity. But with high power 5W diodes, 120 degree is the way to go.

My biggest suggestion is to add an option for adding air-cooling flanges and sealing the electronics area so that growers can use an external fan to remove the heat from the grow area. This allows the grow area to be cooler and, if they use CO2, it won't remove that while trying to keep the grow area cool.

YMMV...

SolarStormFan wrote:Suggestions are always welcome!

Without neither confirming nor denying my identity, let me try to address the lens angle question

With any grow light, you care about 2 things:
1- Coverage area
2- Light intensity

There is an inverse correlation between these 2 metrics; the higher the coverage area, the lower the intensity and vice versa.

You can control these metrics by either changing the height of your light above the conopy or (in case of LEDs) by changing the lens angle of your LEDs. The closer you have your light to the plant, the higher the intensity, the smaller the coverage area. The narrower the beam angle of your LEDs (given a constant height), the higher the intensity, the smaller the coverage area.

If you are trying to bloom certain sun loving plants (tomatoes for example), you need high intesity, say 1,000 uMoles/m-2/s. You cannot achieve this intensity with 1W diodes unless you use narrow beam angles (90 degrees or smaller) or get really close to the plant (within a few inches.) A 3W diode does a better job from a distance. But with a set of 5W diodes you can easily achieve this intensity from a distance of 18" even with a 120 degree lens. In fact, any narrower than this is overkill. And you'll have great coverage area at 18" with a 120 degree lens.

Bottom line: With low power diodes, narrow lens angles are critical to achieve high intensity. But with high power 5W diodes, 120 degree is the way to go.

That makes sense. So what would you say is the best distance to have the light from your plants? The biggest hurdle i have run into is finding an equal medium for light distance. To close and my plants bend toward the light because its not covering enough canopy, to far and growth slows down considerably. I have 4 solar flares covering a 4x4 area which should be plenty to easily cover, but i find my outward most plants are still bending toward the light.

Wouldn't you essentially be able to place the light a further distance from your plants if you had the 5w diodes with 90 degree lenses? And since you would be much further away would that increase the the canopy coverage as well? Or do the lenses focus the light that much that instead you are simply increasing distance without canopy coverage. Which in case I can see how that wouldn't be beneficial.

The biggest issue i have run into with LED is canopy coverage. Plain and simple. The lights themselves can grow the shit out of some plants haha. But getting that light to properly disperse and reach your plants has been my problem. Which is why i switched from the solar storm to the solar flares, so i could move them apart a bit and have a better coverage area.

SisterMaryElephant wrote:My biggest suggestion is to add an option for adding air-cooling flanges and sealing the electronics area so that growers can use an external fan to remove the heat from the grow area. This allows the grow area to be cooler and, if they use CO2, it won't remove that while trying to keep the grow area cool.

YMMV...

Based on my experience using both lights. The solar storm runs extremely cool. I was actually really surprised. The 4 solar flares run much warmer. This is a good suggestion. Especially if you are chaining lights together.

Like SSF said, it's a trade-off. The 5w diodes will allow you to move it farther away from the canopy to increase coverage but then you don't get the penetration and intensity which affects yield too. The 90 deg lens angle would do exactly as you said, it would narrow area coverage and lifting the light more to compensate would only decrease intensity and therefore penetration. All lighting has this same issue, only with LED is there the factor of lens angle too.

Optimum distance, according to CLW, is 18"-24" (to get a balance of penetration and area coverage) but other factors like genetics and environment could allow some people to get them closer, for better penetration, at the expense of coverage.

I've never had my hands on a SF, only the SS, so I can't say anything about that heat but if your edges are still suffering, I'd spread them out ~6 inches each closer to the outside. Since you have 4 of them, the middle plants shouldn't suffer as much due to overlap and it'll help the outer plants. The SS certainly DOES put out quite a bit of heat and from what you're saying it sounds like both the SF and SS could use an air-cooling option.