A customer has a question and I hope we can get some opinions on it, thanks.
Can you grow under high pressure sodium lighting and led grow lights at the same time with plants?
For some reason I can’t find an answer. Would it hurt the plants or would it just provide more lighting?
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. I normally just use hps but recently was given two led grow lights from a friend that is getting married and she is not a fan of the grow.
You won’t have any problem using both. The led’s could be used for fill, for seedlings, or for side lights.
You can absolutely use them together
Some use leds as side lighting etc
You should get great results
I concur, no problem.
As long as it is placed to avoid burning the plants, you cannot possibly recreate the sunlight so the more the merrier. Electricity becomes the barrier. HPS and Leds on the same circuit can draw more than 15 amps so you have to check breakers in small rooms you might be using.
@Stomper that is good advice about having enough power supply
In fact i have 20 amp circuits in my grow room
I live in a manufactured home and the side room is on 15s so I had to run a cord from another breaker to run the fans. I can put the hps and two 300w leds on the 15, but that’s it.
I am running one 400 watt HPS and 400 real watts of LED COBs. 800 watts total is just 6.7 amps. A 15 amp breaker should be able to handle 1800 watts. You probably don’t need 1800 watts of light! That would light 36 square feet.
Next up, 240 lol.
I don’t have a whole lot of experience with the newer ballasts, but it sounds much like the leds they’re a little more efficient at higher voltage. Assuming they’re dual voltage in the first place?
If the drivers have a switcher front-end, then 100-250 is not much different in terms of efficiency. They just run at a different duty cycle of on to off time. They still switch at the same frequency. A much bigger factor for the switching duty cycle is the voltage it needs to put out to drive your COB chain at the preset current. That’s more like a 4.5 times range for a Mean Well driver I just checked.
Depending on the driver, it’s usually around 2-5%. The elg drivers derate at 120v so they’re a little less efficient.
On the output side of most you generally want to at least cover the first half of the range, otherwise it’s not good at all. But that just comes down to selecting the proper driver. They don’t necessarily need to be loaded to 100% voltage, but closer the better.
I actually have 240 already lol @dbrn32
HahahHa i just haven’t picked up a timer to run on that but do plan on it
Im also looking into a off grid power system to power my grow room initial investment may prevent me from
Moving forward on that tho for a while
Yes. Plenty of people do.
Sweet! Assuming you’ve looked at and weighed all of the options?
Off grid is by far the way we’d all like to do it in this world. It’s also usually the most difficult/expensive usually. The power storage and or needing backup gen gets pretty expensive.
We did an on grid solar 10,200 watts 2 years ago. I want to say it was a little under $10,000 after energy rebates and tax credits figured in, but I’m not exactly sure what initial cost was. I know this guy, but more of friend of a friend type of deal. Anyway, it was new ranch I’d guess around 1600 sq ft and he estimated around 7000 Watts to cover load of home, and was trying to cover 1000 watt and 400 watt hid, fans and such. Last I knew he had to shell out a bill or 2 at beginning of year because his program reset, but was bill free for rest of year. He never called when I offered to build him cobs anyway lol.
Not sure if any of that matters lol, just thought I’d throw it out. There are some micro inverters out that function as a 1 per panel type of unit. I haven’t seen them in person, but seems like it would be ideal for a growing system.