Why choose LED plant growth lights for plant growth
One question that is usually asked about LED plant growth lights is: Are they really ready to deal with the golden time of LED plant growth lights?
The answer is: get ready, because they have been around for a long time and are getting better and better. Continuous development and various trends make LED plant lights the best choice for indoor planting. These mainly include: improved lamp beads, lenses, increasing electricity bills, and growers' pursuit of energy saving and convenient use.
LED plant growth lights have obvious advantages in the following three aspects:
1. Better luminaires. Illuminators have always been one of the main reasons hindering the development of the plant lamp market. It was only recently that the LED lamp beads that could provide the wavelengths required for plant photosynthesis (especially at 660nm) came out. Market demand Nano is a unit of measuring the energy of light, which represents the size of a certain waveband at various points. The red light at the end of the reddish spectrum emitted by the 660nm lamp bead is very important for plant photosynthesis. It’s funny how many vendors claim that they are the first to start using True 660nm. At that time, LED plant growth lights did lack the strength to allow plants to grow. Now, after a few years, the wattage is higher, and the lamp beads with a wider spectrum are led plant lights into a new era. Compared with the previous plant lights, the new generation of plant lights has greatly improved the spectrum and intensity.
2. Secondary optical lens The second great breakthrough of the LED plant growth lamp is the optical lens. The plastic condensing lens is placed on the LED lamp beads to enhance the intensity of the light, and at the same time greatly improve the light penetration and distribution. At present, many institutions are still committed to the research of optical lenses and are looking forward to more innovations.
3 Increasing electricity bills High electricity bills have also greatly stimulated growers to switch to more energy-efficient LED plant growth lights. In southern California, our power company SCE announced that they will increase prices every year for the next few years. A 1000-watt HID lamp needs to work 12 hours a day during the flowering period, and consumes 4.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. According to SCE, the current highest electricity bill is $0.36 per kilowatt-hour, and the annual electricity bill is $1,500. And this does not include electricity used to maintain ambient temperature such as air conditioning fans. LED grow lights can cut electricity bills in half.
The advantages of dimmable LED grow lights
There are some plant lights that can adjust the spectrum, and the user can turn on or off the red light and blue light separately through several separate knobs. Some growers think this is unnecessary, but some growers think that reducing the red light can reduce the distance between nodes on the plant stem. After years of trials and tests, growers believe that the best way to make plants shorter is to hang the lamps lower. It is necessary for the plants to try to get close to the tall lamps.
For LED plant growth lights, dimming has obvious advantages. The risk of adjusting the spectrum of the LED is far less than the benefits of adjusting the appropriate spectrum to the plant. LED grow lights may have more knobs, and can even control every kind of light. Enables growers to tune out the best and most suitable spectrum for their plants. These adjustable LED plant lights may uncover the spectral mixing ratio required by each plant, thereby promoting the development of LED plant lights and producing growth lights suitable for various plants. In addition, commercial growers who grow a variety of plants can benefit from it, because they can find specific lamps suitable for their specific plant growth.
The total cost of buying an LED plant growth light: Please consider what costs have been reduced for you by the LED plant growth light. The price of an LED plant growth lamp may be 3 times or more expensive than a HID due to different functions. But these initial investments can be offset by lower care costs and electricity bills. The cost recovery time of LED grow lights is actually much shorter than that of HID. This is because when using LED plant growth lights, many of the equipment necessary for using HID can be reduced or eliminated. These reduced electricity bills are even more than the electricity bills saved by LED grow lights.
Introduction to the characteristics of LED plant growth lights
LED is the abbreviation of light-emitting diode. The difference between LED and HID is that LED uses semiconductor to emit light, while HID emits light by generating heat, and the luminous plasma gas emits light. When the current passes through the LED, the crystal in the very center of the lamp bead emits light of different colors according to the different materials used. This crystal is surrounded by a reflector, and there are epoxy lenses on the reflector, and they are all sealed by an epoxy shell.
The LED grow light is composed of LED lamp beads, radiator, fan, power supply and housing. A single lamp bead is in contact with the radiator, and the radiator, together with the fan, dissipates the heat emitted by the LED. The LED power supply is similar to the power supply used by HID, and supplies power to the LED. The new generation of LED plant growth lights will use optical lenses to achieve the effect of concentrating and enhancing the intensity of the light.
LED grow lights have opened up a whole new world for indoor growers. Now we can control the wavelength that plants actually receive, instead of adjusting our planting methods according to the effective wavelengths on the market. We can make different led plant lights according to different plants. The characteristics of LED plant growth lights, especially its low heat, paved the way for large-scale planting.
Low heat is a feature that LED grow lights can take advantage of. As we discussed before, LED grow lights produce very little heat. Of course, heat is a more complicated topic, so let's leave it to those physicists. What we need to know is what happens when we turn off the lights? Light quanta no longer exist, so where will they go? Physicists tell us that they disappear in the entire system, and this system refers to our entire production room. This is what we know as the law of conservation of energy. Energy can be converted but will not disappear. It is difficult to say when the light decays, but it turns into heat in the end. In theory, 1W is equal to 3.412BTU of heat. This equation applies to any lamps, HID, fluorescent lamps, LED grow lights and other lamps. How is this really the case, then why does the LED plant light produce less heat? The reason is very simple. When people use LED plant lights, their wattage will be as low as 40%-50% than HID. Low wattage means low calories.
Note: The working principle of infrared heaters is to heat the surface and then increase the ambient temperature. This is the opposite of the traditional heater. The traditional heater first heats the ambient temperature and then increases the temperature of the surface of the object. In your garden, these so-called object surfaces refer to the trunk and leaves of your plants.
Another reason why LED grow lights produce less heat is HID. The infrared in HPS produces a lot of useless heat. The principle that infrared can heat the surface of an object has been used in daily life for many years. For example, infrared is used to heat the bathroom, and infrared is used to maintain the temperature of food in the hotel. Recently, infrared microwave ovens and grills have also been on the market. Infrared has no other effect besides increasing the temperature around your plants. If the lamp manufacturer publishes their spectrum distribution map, and their spectrum contains infrared, we can easily understand why their lamps heat so much. If the spectrum distribution chart can show wavelengths higher than 900nm, we can compare the heat generated by LED plant growth lamps with different light sources.
LED plant growth light and spectrum introduction
The wavelength of the LED plant growth light can be set according to customer needs and customized according to various plant growth conditions and needs. The plant light has a wide variety of wavelengths and has a large room for adjustment. It can be adjusted according to various plant preferences through different lighting configurations. The led plant light is suitable for lighting all kinds of plants. Plant photosynthesis of light does not need to look at color temperature and lumens.
Blue light is able to promote the growth of green leaves; red light is helpful for flowering and fruiting and prolonging the flowering period! Comparing the three seedlings with different lighting, it is found that the seedlings illuminated by the red LED plant growth lamp will grow slower than the other two seedlings, and the whole is very small.
The seedlings illuminated by the blue LED plant growth lamp have relatively few leaves and the whole is elongated. The seedlings illuminated by the pink LED plant growth lamp have relatively large leaves and the overall growth of the plant is very balanced. Plants of different types have somewhat different light wavelengths that affect their growth. In the future, it is necessary to conduct experiments including adjusting the irradiation time at agricultural test sites.
When using LED plant growth lights to supplement light for plants, the height from the leaves is generally about 0.5 meters, and continuous exposure for 10 hours a day can completely replace the sun. The effect is very significant. The growth rate is 3 times faster than that of ordinary plants that grow naturally. It solves the problem of lack of sunlight in winter, promotes the chlorophyll, anthocyanin and carotene needed in plant photosynthesis, and enables fruits and vegetables to be 20% earlier. Time harvesting increases the yield by 30% to 50%, and can also increase the sweetness of fruits and vegetables.
The effect of the spectral range on plant physiology is at 280 ~ 315nm ---> the effect on the morphology and physiological process is minimal at 315 ~ 400nm ---> the absorption of chlorophyll is less, which affects the effect of photoperiod and prevents stem elongation from 400 ~ 520nm ( Blue) -> Chlorophyll and carotenoids have the largest absorption ratio, and have the greatest impact on photosynthesis. Periodic effect has a significant impact on 720 ~ 1000nm ---> low absorption rate, stimulates plant cell lengthening, affects flowering and seed germination> 1000nm ---> converted into heat. From the above data, light of different wavelengths has an effect on plant photosynthesis The effect of the light is not the same. The light required for photosynthesis of plants has a wavelength of about 400 ~ 720nm. The light of 400 ~ 520nm (blue) and 610 ~ 720nm (red) contribute the most to photosynthesis. The light of 520 ~ 610nm (green) has a very low rate of absorption by phytochromes.
According to the above principles, LED plant growth lights are made into three forms of red-blue combination and full blue and full red to provide light of two wavelengths of red and blue, covering the range of wavelengths required for photosynthesis. In terms of visual effects, the red and blue plant lights are pink. As for white LED lamps, the most common use is to use blue LED crystals to excite yellow phosphors, which compositely produces a visual white light effect. In the energy distribution, there are two peaks in the blue area at 445nm and the yellow-green area at 550nm. The 610 ~ 720nm red light required by plants is very lacking.
This explains why the white LED is unfavorable for plant growth. The ratio of red and blue spectrum of plant lights is generally between 5:1 and 10:1, and the ratio of 7-9:1 is usually optional. When using LED plant lights to illuminate plants, the height from the leaves is generally about 0.3-0.5 meters.
