Quote Originally Posted by plantmattg
Quote Originally Posted by WAbedroomponics
do LEDs work to help plants grow? i am new to indoor systems and aquaponics altogether and have never heard about LED lights as grow lights but i am always learning new things welcome
Yes they do, but there are a lot of different LEDs out there and a lot of misinformation. Fluorescents are nice but they arent really a high output light, they are great for herbs and leafy veggies or most plant you will grow indoors(or fruiting plants if you have enough but a good LED is comparative to HID lighting as far as intensity goes. Ive used cfl, floro tubes, hps, and LED and prefer LEDs based on my experiences. Only problem with LED is the footprint, very small, so all your light is pretty focused. But urban farmer is right they are very expensive, i have 2 126w lights which add up to about $900 , but they were a gift, i could never afford or justify spending that kind of money, sure ill save money in the long run but i dont think its necessary, plus i thought the glow from the hps was intense in my kitchen the LED makes it look like the red light district. :P Sorry im not much of a picture taker but ill try to get some pics up for you guys, I know i have some of the tower garden and raised beds but i dont think i have any of the indoor, never was happy enough with the look or out come. Anybody here familiar with the tower garden?
Wow, that's a lot of LED wattage. I have only played with the weaker ones, but I positioned them literally on top of the plants (they still cost $100 a piece). The thing is for the cost of electricity vs. the cost of initial equipment cost, florescents are the best bang for your buck.

Assume your 250 watts of LEDs is equal to about 560 watts of florescent.

7x shop lights @ $10 + 14x bulbs @ $1 = $84
vs.
2x 125w LED arrays @ $450 = $900

Assume a 12/12 light cycle. With a 300 watt difference, it would take:

(12 hours / day) x (0.300 kilowatt / hour) = 3.6 kWh / day @ $0.10 per kWh = $0.36 per day

THEREFORE:
$900 - $84 = $816
It would take... $816 / ($0.36 / day) = 2,267 days or just over 6 years of daily operation for the LEDs to start saving money on the fluorescent bulbs. (In reality you would have replaced the $1 bulbs about 3-6 times here, but I did round down on the years.)

So, from a practical standpoint it is cheaper to start-up with some fluorescent. It is also cheaper to replace them if something were to go wrong. Lastly, some people only use them during the winter months. In some cases to start seeds. If they were only used 3 months out of the year it would take 24 years for LEDs to be cheaper. By then, we will have some fancy laser lights or better.

My indoor hobby lasted about a year before I went outdoors with it, which is why I couldn't commit to the LEDs. I wasn't sure how long it would take, but I knew it would be cheaper to get some fluorescents. I ended up using them around the house once I dismantled everything; so, not much wasted money... at least that's what I tell the old lady!

One more note as far as which is better. I did compare a 16 Watt LED array on 1 species plant vs. a 16 Watt CFL bulb on the same species of plant (Capsicum annuum). I positioned the lights 1-2 inches from the plant (adjusted daily as the plant grew). Over the entire course of the plant's growth, the CFL clearly outperformed the LED. In the course of the growth the LED plant never got large enough to produce peppers although it flowered some. The plants were in the same aquaponic grow bed divided by a divider so light didn't pass. I didn't record the data, but all the other variables were equal. Maybe I had an inferior LED product, but Watt for Watt the CFL beat the LED hands down. I would love to see this done using the higher end LED lights, but don't by those cheap ones (and they're really not that cheap in price just cheap in quality).

With all that said, I would happily set up some high-end LED arrays if they were a gift!