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LED Grow Lights - The Advantages of LED Grow Lights
With the development of ever improving LED (light emitting diodes) lighting over the last several years, it is finally becoming economical to use LEDs as grow lights for your indoor gardening and seed starting needs. But is that the only reason to use LED grow lights instead of the traditional fluorescent grow lights?
In years gone by, LEDs were useful for a variety of applications. But most of them centered on things like indicator lights and displays. This was because the physics of the LEDs had only developed to the point where fairly low intensity diodes could be built, and only in narrow spectrum of visible light (we all remember the red displays on the old calculators). So the light was not bright enough or in the right spectrum (or colors) to be useful for growing plants.
That has changed significantly over the last few years, and now there are a number of LED lighting solutions. But aside from the novelty of using LEDs, what are the advantages of these systems.
Generally, LED grow lights have these characteristics:
Reduced power consumption (can be just 10% of HID lights)
Increased bulb life (generally measured in tens of thousands of hours)
Reduced heat output
No ballasts like fluorescents, so no noise from the ballasts
Can focus high intensity light in a smaller area
The way these lights area often configured is to use LEDs that are focussed in the parts of the visible light spectrum that plants actually use. For example, plants look green because they dont absorb green light, they reflect it. Different plants will more effectively use different parts of the spectrum, but in general there are some parts of the spectrum like red and blue that are used a lot more. So by building lighting that only generates light in the useful parts of the spectrum, and not wasting energy making light that the plants will just reflect or not use then they can become much more efficient.
LED grow lights are becoming much more common. You may even find them in your local nursery. Try them for your indoor garden or seed starter area, and you may find you like them.
