In my Veg setup I am actually hoping that 1. I don't have exactly 100% coverage, since I can just keep a steady rotation of the pots and they will still get the needed growth time and hight, and delay veg'n long enough not to interfer with the overall cycle. 2. If hight becomes too much of an issue I can always trim them down and keep the tops lopped off if need be.
Yeah I agree and know what you mean when it comes to the stretch and density, that was one main issue under the HID that my friend often experienced due to hight and space issues. We have seens more then enough of those issues with HID to be able to spot it under LED as soon/if it starts.
Yeah 11 band is way way beyond overkill, for LED. As I have said in other posts there are too many companies out there that take advantage of customers who do not know enough about LED lighting and rip them off. Too many bogus claims and misleading information.
Personally I feel that is why it is important to support the few honest and good LED grow lighting companies that are out there. The only way to advance the research and to help bring future costs down on these lights are to make sure you support a company that actually cares about the industry.
When it comes to temp, growers choices vary. The ones that I know who grow under HID normally strive for around the mid 80's to 90 without co2.
In your setup, you would still be using 5 lights, we each would be
![Razz :P](http://www.ledgrowlightforum.com/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
Assuming that you would be leaving the 3 600W HPS veg lights on for 24 hours at a time, I will be doing the same with the 2 300W LED lights, that would be a total of 11520W a day for me and 45600W for you including the extra 2400W for your cooling.
With bloom of 12/12, that would be 13200W for me and 25200W for you, that is including the 100W per hour for an extra 1200W a day.
Daily totals of wattage, Me: 24720W, You: 70800W. Difference of 46080W a day in my favor. Even if you only ran your 600W veg for 18 hours a day that would make your veg numbers lowered to 34200W and your total daily wattage of 59400W, leaving a gap in favor of me for 34680W a day, which is more then double my total daily output.
In 30 days my max would be 741.6 KW compared to your max of 2124 KW. That adds upto huge savings. When people are charged for electricty they are not actually paying for the number of watts that they have used during the billing period, rather they are getting billed for the time it takes to deliver the needed wattage that they are using.
To help this make sence better, if you take the total daily KW I use (24.72KW) and divide that by the numbers of hours in the day your using this energy (simply converson this is not 100%) which would be 24 hours, gives you a total of 1.03. Multiply that by the number of hours your comparing your time on (in this case 1 hour). 24.72 / 24 = 1.03 * 1 = 1.03 KWh extra on average to current useage.
The other max HID lighting would be 2.95 KWh. That is just an illustration to show you how you would make the additional KWh comparisions.
Assuming that veg stage lighting is on for 24 hours and bloom is on for 12 hours a day. The way to findout the exact amount of additional KWh you will be adding to your bill would vary 12 hours of the day while your bloom is dark.
LED veg wattage is 11520W or 11.52 KW a day over 24 hours, is .48 KWh additional. HID veg wattage is 1.9 KWh additional.
Bloom Led is 13200W and 13.2 KW divide by 12 hours is 1.1KWh, HID bloom wattage is 2.1 KWh additional.
So what this means is that each day your running your set up, for 12 hours of the day LED is using an additional 1.58 KWh and .48KWh the remaining 12 hours. With HID your using 4 KWh additional for 12 hours (while bloom is on), and 1.9 KWh the remaining 12 hours (while bloom is dark).
Energy delivered by electric utilities is usually expressed and charged for in kWh. Note that the kWh is the product of power in kilowatts multiplied by time in hours; it is not kW/h. Also note that watt is the rate at which energy is flowing. For simplicity it means that a 1000 W device will consume 1 kWh in exactly 1 hour. Also a 100 W bulb will consume 1 kWh in 10 hours. Watt is like speed and kWh is like distance.
Now based on the amount I am paying for KWh here, which is $0.06620. Led would be paying an additional 0.104596 and 0.031776 a day in additional power cost. Grand total for LED is 0.136372 a day and $49.77578 a year (not including a leap year). Now with HID your paying a power cost of 0.2648 and 0.12578. Grand total a day for HID is 0.39058 and $142.5617 a year.
I pay super cheep energy costs where I live, this is still a savings of $92.78 a year, each and every year. If your cost of energy is higher then your savings are even more.
Now lets say your 3 600W HPS units with extra cost for cooling fan set up is $1000.00, bulbs ballasts whole 9 yards. The two 1000W HPS setups are an additional $1000.00. Thats a total of $2,000.00, which is more then a fair price for 5 lights. We said earlier that average cost we'd say is $75.00 per bulb. That is an additional $375 a year.
My lights (I wont say the exact amount) but it was around $4,000.00 out of pocket. Let see how close the gap is after 3, 4 and 5 years. 3 years savings is $278.34, 4 years is 371.12, and 5 years is 463.90.
HID cost after 3 years $2,750.00, 4 years 3,125.00, and 5 years 3,500.00. Meanwhile, LED cost plus savings 3 years later is $3,721.66, 4 years later is $3,628.88, and year 5 is $3,536.10.
That is just the savings light system vrs light system, if I am reducing my cost on nutes for the year and lowering my water consumption those are additional savings added on top of the cost. As long as I am able to get close to the ounces per plant that my fellow grower who is using HID lighting was getting, that means I have already paid for the upfront cost in 5 years or less. If I am getting more then their amount with HID with LED then its yet again even less.
That really is the only issue I have when you say you wish the cost of LED lights were cheeper, because it already is comparable right now, the cost that is. Soon enough we will see my results and can better answer that question. The fact of the matter is that more and more growers are making the switch from HID to LED, there must be a reason why this is happening don't you agree?
As time goes on, prices will come down even more for LED's, quality will be greater, and savings will increase even more. It is like the old saying, you have to spend money to make money. If your ballasts hold up for 15 years, for your sake I hope they do not
![Razz :P](http://www.ledgrowlightforum.com/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
That is $5,016.70 more dollars in my pocket then yours.