HID vs LED: The Role of Lighting in Cannabis Cultivation with Eric Harrington



With a background in physics and over 30 years of commercial lighting design and environmental controls experience, as well as …

28 Comments

  1. All of what this guy says is true. But the thing not addressed is plant adaptability and acclimatisation to its environment.
    So a cutivar that has been bred under HID may not give you the result you want or expect under LED. Because it has adapted to THAT (HID) environment. So a particular taste ,flavour, terpine & cannibinoid profile will alter dramatically with LED. And if that (HID) has created a signature cultivar. It may loose that profile signature unless you re- select.
    Aside from this YES its the death of HID in horticulture. The wheel might still be spinning but the hamster is stone cold dead.

  2. Real life experience tells a different story for me so far. It always convinces me on paper. Juries still out. Personally I've been using both together. Seems like my plants have been getting stressed from my 280watt led white light. I've turned mine down..hmm
    Decades experience still a ? For me..

  3. Really appreciate the education however he seems to be trying to sell (LED) more than edifying. Whenever I hear a human saying that some particular spectrum of the sun is not useful or efficient to a certain plant or that a plant does not or cannot efficiently use a certain spectrum, that’s when you lose me.

  4. The problem I see with LED is PAR maintenance on most fixtures falls below 95% after 5-6K hours, and below 90% at 10K hours. Disposable fixtures are well and good if they're cheap, but at $1200-$2000 US to light a 4X4' grid is anything but economical.

    Eric, I also wanted to mention that most indoor grows ARE planar, we go to some effort to make the top of the canopy flat and level, and reduce or eliminate branches, budsites and foliage beneath the top of the canopy. SOG and SCROG growers know this is the most efficient way to use horizontal light fixtures, no commercial growers I know grow large Christmas-tree shaped plants, the extensive veg time is cost prohibitive.

    Most of the ROI calculations are made by LED manufacturers, so they make claims like "1000W DE HPS lights only put out 960umols" (cough cough Fluence) and fail to account for the increased dehumidification needed due to the lack of infrared. They all assume everyone uses air conditioning, and that a new DE HPS fixture is $500, instead of $240.

    They can put out as much as 4400umols at 30 inches from the canopy at the 1000W setting with a deep reflector, but of course that's an obscene amount of PAR.

    Using real-world numbers, my ROI for an LED retrofit is 7 years, about 2 years after I'd throw the panels away for their PAR loss. Once quality lights are in the $300 range they'll be a better bargain, but until that day I'll keep changing my DE HPS bulbs and reflectors annually.

  5. SMUD the Electric Utility in Sacramento did a great side by side study, LED vs. HPS, with 2 LEDs systems that were a generation less efficient than today. The study by SMUD can be found HERE: https://www.smud.org/-/media/Documents/Business-Solutions-and-Rebates/Advanced-Tech-Solutions/LED-Reports/Seven-Leaves-Indoor-Horticulture-LED-Study-Final.ashx?la=en&hash=BAF42446B3952D90CF49B6A564A7C3269252835C But the short strokes were 35% savings with comparable yields and better quality. The results should be closer to 50% today. I have spoken to both growers in the test program and they are slowly replacing all their HPS with LED.

  6. Hi All, Thanks for all the views and great feedback at my Trade-show presentations over the last few years. I want you all to know I am officially an independent consultant now with my company Environmental Design & Technology (EDT) and I am available for consultations regarding cannabis facility planning and design, lighting evaluation and design, grow-room design and co-generation. You can read more and contact me at my website http://www.EDT.design for a free initial consultation. Cheers!!

  7. Ain't it he truth in that these lights are going to be sold like iphones with incremental improvements and extras every year. One day maybe we will be able to go from seed to harvest in 3 days! That was a very informative presentation. It truly is amazing how durable LED's are. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make them upgradeable with new and improved LED tech of the future just slapped in with a screw. Peace out again excellent job.

  8. Thanks for posting this amazing video. Since both LEDs and HIDs are being used for indoor farming, LED vs HID for plant growing become a debatable topic in terms of features, specifications, and cost efficiency. I am a professional indoor farmer and used both the lights for growing plants. I find LED farming lights comparatively better energy efficient & cost effective than HID lights. They work really great and are highly energy-efficient, possess low-electromagnetic radiation, occupy little space, have a longer lifespan, and run at low-temperature. What more could one ask for? I sourced my LED farming lights from SeniorLED on the recommendation of my ex-office employee who is also an indoor farmer. Keep uploading awesome content. You've earned a subscriber.

  9. His line "unless your extracting quality is going to become more and more important" This shows you still have alot to learn about cannabis. Full melt bubble sells for 100 a gram in alot of places, you can NOT make full melt hash out of shit cannabis!

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