Are LED Grow Lights the Future to Growing Plants? 2022 Updated

Do you know, you can grow some certain types of crops throughout the year? Not only that, you can do this comfortably at suitable indoor location rather than any stifling sunny location. Well if you don’t, let us tell you that the advancement in LED lighting technology has made it possible. This advancement is termed as LED Grow Lights.

Grow lights are specially developed for growing plants. At first, they were only limited to large industrial applications but now they are also available for public use at an affordable price. These fixtures allow you to establish indoor farming station, delivering the brightness like sunlight all over the year even in the foggy weather. All it takes is an easy plug-n-play installation. Let’s know more about what these lights are and what they have to offer.

How LED Lights Are the Future of Grow Lighting?
LED light bulbs seem to possess the ideal characteristics for plant growth. They can be manufactured to take advantage of the different colors of the light spectrum. Having the ability to blend colors to produce a range of hues gives farmers the gift of customization.

Why Choose LED Grow Lights?
I already listed some of the reasons why, but let’s go into it deeper when choosing an full spectrum LED grow light system over an HPS grow light system. Efficiency: For the best growth for your plants, the lights need to produce specific light wavelengths. HPS and MH grow bulbs provide great intense coverage in a broad spectrum. But a lot of energy is wasted producing unwanted visible light (usually in the yellow or orange spectrum) and heat. Understanding Wavelengths: Color (PAR for your plants): For effective growth of plants, the lights need to be available in cool and warm varieties. With cool lights (white or blue spectrum) you can get tall spindly plants while warm lights (orange and red spectrum) will produce shorter plants. With LED you get both cool and warm in a single bulb which allows for perfect light balance for your plants.

Yields

Quality engineered grow lights feature a controlled spectrum allowing the plant to receive the appropriate calibration of light for each phase of the grow cycle, from seed to harvest. This ideal full-season spectrum combined with SpecGrade LED’s proprietary optics help to maximize PPFD ensuring all of the light reaches the plant, reducing the overflow of light into unnecessary locations such as the floor and surrounding walls. Growers have the flexibility to choose from desired wavelengths, allowing each plant to receive the unique amount of light needed. Having the option to change the amount of light based on the plant ensures optimized light exposure for a larger yield.

Energy Efficient

The price of a modern LED grow light fixture may seem higher than old technology, but the investment is quick in return. With various municipalities raising the rates on energy costs for growers, or outright capping their pull from the grid, it’s more important than ever to reduce energy consumption with LED lights. The value of LED grow lights will pay for themselves with the amount of energy and utilities saved, not to mention the quick yields along the way thanks to specially calibrated spectrums and computer controlled timing mechanisms.

Ballasts and Heat

Another major complaint with LED light fixtures is ballasts waste heat and the hassles of replacing failing ballasts and lights. As long as LED grow lights have existed, there has been a comparison with HID lights, and by contrast, the heat generated by LEDs is significantly less. However, what many fail to consider is that a significant portion of the heat associated with HID lights are generated by the ballasts used to control them. Most LED grow lights still contain ballasts, the very same type used to control HID lights, and those ballasts still produce a great deal of heat.

Sizing up competing grow lights

Indoor farmers don’t give the all plants the same nutrients, so should they expose their plants to the kinds of lights?

Incandescent lights provide red wavelength stimulation that helps plants bloom. They also give off an excess amount of heat, which can burn your plants. Incandescent bulbs are infamous for their short lifespans and energy inefficiency.

Halogen lights provide the full light spectrum, making them a favorite among indoor farmers. Like incandescent bulbs, halogen bulbs are not energy efficient and produce a lot of unnecessary heat.

People know fluorescent lights for their high levels of blue wavelengths, which help plant growth more efficiently. Fluorescent bulbs are not only cooler than incandescent and halogen bulbs, but they are also available in the full wavelength spectrum. When positioned 12 inches away from plants, they provide their best growth results. Unfortunately, fluorescent bulbs contain high levels of the toxic element mercury.

LED grow lights are more powerful and efficient than the older generation high-pressure sodium and metal halide bulb grow lights. They lower the electricity bill and produce less heat. Less heat allows putting the light closer to plants, the plants do not get burned.

Next-generation LED grow lights deliver dramatic power savings and unmatched product reliability. They offer low power, high-efficiency, uniform light pattern, homogenous light distribution at precisely the right wavelengths and color ratios needed for superior photosynthetic response.

LED grow lights are different. Grow lights provide artificial light used for plant growth. The spectrum of growth lights is tuned to the plant growing task. Plant light has photons from the blue to red (400–700 nm) part of the spectrum. This is called growth light. Horticulture lamps address the role of light in the growth and development of plants. Plant growth is a function of photosynthesis.

The plant growth lights work in three different ways:

• To provide all the light a plant needs to grow
• To supplement sunlight, especially in winter months when daylight hours are short
• To increase the length of the “day” in order to trigger specific growth and flowering

LED grow lights use growth light to automate and control growing. The ability to grow food consistently, locally represents a major breakthrough for humanity. Growth lights permit people to grow food in warehouses and in the home, dedicating unused space in a manner that is efficient for producing food.