I veg for between 9-11 days…
I can already see how this ends.
Lol everyone will question which hps bulbs and fixtures he’s using and likely start looking for excuses.
There’s a good reason I ditched hps and it’s not the heat, it’s the watts.
Big thank you to @legalcanada for posting these!
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i started posting them before he was associated with HLG cause i thought it’d be a good impartial comparison then he ended up partnering with the company and taking over the canadian market, but i figure these results would be very similar to any samsung LM561C fixtures (solstrip, photon fantom etc)
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No questioning from me, to my eye the look of the plants was comparable, the size seemed the same and if they make the same that’s great. If they make more due to higher uniformity of light that is even better.
If they do, all I need is someone to make a 2M long LED light that can be hung vertically in a colosseum.
Might have to be me.
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I think that would be fairly simple to do with something like solstrips. Just mount to aluminum channel or heatsinks standing vertically - maybe in a square or circular arraingment. Your specific setup would depend on how tall it needed to be and your total wattage requirements. A single fan blowing down the center of the heat sinks should cool them all at the same time. Or use lots of strips and run them at moderate power and no fan will be needed.
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I would be replacing 1800W of HPS and the end result has to be smaller than about 6 inches round. They are currently in cooltubes which draw the heat away nicely.
Any flexibility in that 6" number?
Also, what is the vertical length you need for the light generating part? Thats going to be an important factor to figure out what will fit.
You will need roughly 20 solstrips = 1000 watts of LED to replace that 1800 watt HPS. Thats 20 solstrips that are aprox 1.5" wide x 15" long.
Not much flexibility at all I’m afraid. I would need approx 6ft or 2m.
That works out to be about 5 in a circle, four high.
I will think about this a bit more…
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You can easily fit 5 in a circle under 6" diameter using the solsticks heat sinks.
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I still need to have a good think. Any changes will be at least after September anyway but I could do a lot of the designing before then.
It might be that I run two different systems. HPS for winter, LED (or possibly some sort of plasma hybrid system) for summer.
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here’s the breakdown of the numbers. LED = 1.46gpw and HPS = 0.86gpw. claims he’ll be getting 5 pounds per 1000w of LED soon, which would be ~2.25gpw. then he talks about his new channel and website for a while. there will be 1 more episode once he gets the lab results back, prob by friday.
those were all the numbers he gave… 1.46 * 8755 = 12782.3 grams total on LED side and 0.86 * 15750 = 13545 grams total HPS side. so 762.7 grams more from the HPS side, i’m assuming from the same amount of plants and same size room.
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Impressive results for the LED side. Im still wondering how much of that difference is due to his screw ups - on both sides.
Finance wise, the LED’s dont really make a lot of sense based on his numbers. Roughly 6% drop in total yield but close to 45% drop in energy usage sounds good - but…
Im just making wild guesses here, but lets say his electric costs are in the $0.10/kWh.
If he ran for 3 months with the lights on an average of say 60% of the time, thats about 1300 hours rounding off.
So the HPS side used 1300 x 15.750kW = 20475 kWh x .1 = $2047.50
The LED cost was 1300 x 8.755 = 11381 kWh x .1 = $1138.10
So he saved $1138 on the LED side but it cost him 762 gms of product. Whats the wholesale cost of weed anyway - $2/gm??
762 x 2 = $1524 in lost income vrs a savings of $1138.
I suspect he saved a little more on the LED side because of needing less cooling, but I have no real clue.
Financially, its almost a wash with the HPS having a slight lead. I wonder what the initial cost difference was?
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8755w would be 17 of the HLG 550 fixtures (515w each) and they retail for $1350 canadian each, or $22,950 total, but i’m sure he got a handsome discount. he’s completely swapping his other room to LED now as well. BC is $0.0884 per kWh for first 1,350 kWh in an average two month billing period and $0.1326 after that
for under 3,000 you could have all the boards (from china) and drivers (from canada) to make 17 fixtures, add another 500 for heatsinks and wiring, and you’ve saved over $18,000 per room. no wonder hlg stephen is talking about buying a half million dollar machine (i think) just for placing the diodes on PCBs but maybe PCB fabrication also, cant remember what he said
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Still, his initial investment in the HPS lights was a heck of a lot less than the cost of the LED’s, plus he lost money on the LED side as far as return on product.
He must be assuming he can boost the production on the LED side a lot more than he can on rhe HPS side to justify getting rid of the HPS lights.
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Often, a large business will use a product that is not as good but lasts longer, has lower running costs, and is easier to maintain.
These can be headaches and costs for a business over a certain size which are not relevant to a small producer.
Personally, I am restricted on space and so the drop on yield per square foot means it is a no go for me.I am also restricted on power but I can run HPS in the space I have comfortably.
Lower heat is tempting but I would not accept the reduced yield that comes with it…
EDIT :
Just watched the video and wished I had not. Static shot of the back of his head while he waffles on about his new website. Not one image of a dry bud, just the two numbers, 1.42GPW LED 0.86 HPS…
EDIT 2 :
Round these parts, that 762 grams would cost about £4500 and electricity costs about £0.135 per KWH so 20475-11381=9094 KWH x 0.135=£1227
so running LED would cost you about £3272 per crop after adjusting for electricity.
With the increased set up costs and reduced yield, I think I will wait.
LED for the UK does not yet make sense.
My local shop has a very smart man inside it who knows a lot of things and he said weeks ago “You will save some on electricity but you will lose on overall yield. It does not make sense yet, the technology is changing too fast, I would wait until it stops changing so much”
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way over my head. ha ha ha
Thats a good point abut the long term costs. LED’s should win that one easily, which would help offset the initial costs.
Remember too that he is a wholesaler, so you need to compare wholesale costs - not retail prices.
Plus, the most important thing to me is that he only lost 6% on the yield. That could easily be caused by the major major screw ups they had early in the grow. They did everything wrong at one time or another from burning the shit out of them with sulfur to over AND under watering and feeding. Those screw ups make this comparison almost useless. I can see nearly killing your plants - multiple times - during a grow causing a much larger loss of yield than that 6%.
For all we know, if there had been no screw ups - the HPS might have won the yield thing by a much larger % - OR - the LED’s might actually have won on all fronts.
Plus - how would things have turned out of he had simply had a few more LED fixtures?
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He expects closer to 5g/w on a perfect run with the LEDs. And even if he only yields half of that, it would make up for the shortage in actual yields compared to hps
I’ve gotta agree that dismay isn’t a strong enough word for the last video. He started out by apologizing for taking so long, and then completely skipped over any of the data! Why in the world does he think we watch, to hear his sweet buttery voice? I hate butter!
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In my own little comparison I’m totally impressed by the LED’s compared to a MH.
In the same size space I used to use (5’x5’ in an open room), initial results seem to indicate that it’s possible to get the same production with 500 - 700 watts of LED vs. 1000 watt MH. That is running a mixed strain garden grown in soil.
Using 2 - 2’ x 4’ Sol strip light rigs has a slight advantage over a single 1000 watt MH when you are flowering plants ranging in size from 2’ to 6’. Under one rig are plants up to 3’ tall and under the other rig the 4’ - 6’ plants. Their is enough overlap light from the lower rig to keep the 4’ plants happy living among the 6 footers and the lower buds on the 6 footers get bigger than they would under the 1000. I also like being able to adjust the light rigs independently as needed vs. lower and elevating the plants under a stationary 1000. I know I could accomplish the same thing using 2 400 watt MH or 2 600 watt hps or a combo of the two.
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It really does seem though like HPS and LED are at least producing comparable results per sq/ft.
I reckon in a couple of years, when the same LED light has been the best for a year or two, I might switch for flowering.
For my mother and cuttings, I might switch very soon. I reckon I could swap out my 250W CFL for something like a 100W LED panel.
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