That’s a damn good point. People love to leave out AC costs from their gram per watt equations. 
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wow that’s crazy expensive, i spent like $600 for 700w of LED and i’m sure it’s over 1k PAR at 24" and total output is probably around 1600-1800 PPF and over 117500 lumens
hopefully within a week or 2 i will have a full selection of grow lights, equipment and nutrients available on my website
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@legalcanada the example I used above was for a cutting edge, no holds barred, full on efficiency rig of the type that only makes sense if you pay 40¢ per kWh or more, like Hawaii.
You can get most of those efficiency gains for a lot less money, and it’s falling all the time. In 10 years I would be surprised if fixtures hitting 70% efficiency weren’t both affordable and widely available.
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website?! you have a website?
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I think you will be disappointed. This looks like the typical hocus-pocus consumer LED grow light product that has flooded the market. Marginally better than the 1w generic blurple diode lamps of a couple of years ago, but basically the same issues:
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In LED, the diode is everything. If you don’t know the manufacturer and model of your diodes, you know nothing. “Buy this car, it’s great. It’s made in Europe. Buy it today.” Would you buy that car knowing only that? Why would you spend $1K on a light then?
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The only information about the diodes is that they are “~6w” and there are 72 of them, and together they make a “480w” light. Huh? 6 watts x 72 is 432 watts, not 480. First blatant lie. Or they are overdriving them, a recipe for burnt-out diodes or total failure within months.
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More likely, to keep this admittedly cool looking Spydr-like rig lit for a couple of years, they are using a cheap generic driver running at 200-250 watts, powering the no-name and likely low-rated lifespan “~6w” diodes at ~3w. So your actual real-world output is likely to be similar to a 400 watt HID.
$1000 for a 400-watt HID equivalent. Yee-hah.
The SolSheetX delivers 250 true watts (from the wall) of Samsung LM561C diodes - the best lumens/watt, 50,000 hour white diode on the market - delivering 45,000 lux at 12 inches. $269 fully assembled with dimmable Mean Well HLG-240-24A driver.
Sorry if this comes off as spam, but I believe in LEDs and hate to see the technology over-hyped and poorly deployed, and I really hate to see growers continually ripped off by equipment vendors selling nothing but sizzle and treating us like village idiots. Please don’t waste your money. Send it back, and buy or build a lamp with quality components. I guarantee you won’t regret it. You’ll get twice the light, and 4x the life, for half the price or less.
-b420
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I think 561’s are where it’s at right now for best bang for your buck. You just happened to put them in a nice package for us common folk. lol.
Still loving mine, wish I had a par meter to measure what i’m getting. My box oughta be flooded with photons tho with my strip number and spacing I highly doubt I have any weak spots.
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Jelly I think you are going to have more than enough light, your issues will likely come from too much light. Bleaching is a real issue with these strips if you exceed 40 w/sf and position lights closer than 12 inches from the canopy.
PAR meters are expensive, but one of the many advantages of white LED growing is that cheapo lux meters like this one can provide a pretty good baseline to estimate PPFD using this formula: LUX reading/1000 * 15 = PPFD.
At the very least, they can provide a relative measure of the light field for LED growers as a group to compare notes.
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If you look closely at the close up pics of the lamp cob’s you can tell they are cheap even the screw hole and placement the reflector and diode are malformed… Just look at the second pic in the left side, make sure you expand the pic to see it… Sorry not trying to insult your buy, but it looks like chinese garbage, but the bad thing is that you are not getting it for the chinese garbage $$$ So it makes it even worse!
http://growace.com/grow-light/led-grow-lights/full-spectrum/king-cob-480-watt-professional-series-high-coverage-cob-led-grow-light.html#product_tabs_description_tabbed
The right LED lights are the best thing to grow plants under, period. Unfortunately there’s a lot of crap and hype out there and it hurts the industry.
I spent a lot of money to get a fuck ton of good lights so I’m set…
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This is slightly off subject but I’m not sure it needs it’s open topic, has anybody here switched from se hps to de hps? Was there any noticable differences?
a few friends and myself run these… nothing I’ve seen comes close …except the version before these… period… buy one and you will not regret it… if you doubt 2+ grams a watt… just watch
26 days in flower…
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yeah if you want chinese you can even go directly to the manufacturer of quantum boards, 336 diode PCBs @ 35 a piece, max current 2.8a, guys names jeff on alibaba and the pictures have “HS”
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Fluence is so damn expensive tho all at once. Great lights, but more than I can handle at once $$ wise.
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yeah that’s whats so appealing about DIY is you can build it out over time as finances allow and always break it down and reconfigure or repurpose parts etc and these COB/PCB designs are so much easier to build than it seems, it can be overwhelming at first.’
@Perndog realistically your best bet is to pay the restocking fee/shipping to return it and contact @Baudelaire or someone to either DIY or get a prebuilt fixture. if you’re running 72 cobs at 6w each you may as well get LM561C diodes and everyone here could help you design or build it no problem
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the difference in output pays for it in 2 or 3 runs for sure.
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Oh for sure,
I’m not downing it in any way. I just cant afford 1000+ for a prebuilt light all at once. After I get a couple grows in, I’ll have a lot more spending money.
I literally only need to grow 2 ounces in my little cab to pay for the light and be on top of the entire cost of the project.
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I have 2 of the same 400 led great light second yr running them they work great and as far as the kingcob I’m not scared. I’ve seen it in action seemed to work fine for another fellow grower of mine the price is a little steep agreed and I do appreciate all the comments on this subject really THANKS guys .
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@Perndog as long as youre happy that’s all that matters! i’m sure they will grow excellent plants and it is a neat design with moveable bars etc.
i got 4 runs out of b4 3 of the leds burnt out thinking of getting the viparspectra 600 looks about the same but mot light counts
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you can always reuse the driver and case even from old mars lights etc and turn it in to a COB light
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