6 Tips For Saving Money When Switching To LED Grow Lights

October 11, 2021

When investing in grow lights, it is important to think long-term. Two key considerations should be made when browsing grow lights: What kind of yields can a light produce? How much does it cost to operate? Smart cultivators understand that their profit is determined by the size and quality of their crop minus the expenses of consumables like electricity, fertilizer, clones, etc.

An important concept to understand is that higher light density leads to greater yields, which creates more profit per harvest— and LEDs achieve this while also saving money by lowering operating costs compared to HPS/CMH lights. By switching to higher output and more efficient LED lighting you can save hundreds of dollars per light per year.
The full-spectrum led grow light coverage and customization options are renovating the way farmers see indoor and greenhouse growing. The best LED Grow lights are efficient, energy-saving, but most importantly they are really cost-effective in the long run. There are many ways to save money by using LEDs. Here are money-saving tips to follow in order to maximize your savings with LED Grow Lights in your medicinal plants grow operation.

1. Install Multiple LEDs

LED grow lights have the amazing ability to target a specific selection of your crops, using optics. However, obtaining ultimate light conditions could be a challenge with just one unit. Implementing multiple units in your growing facility is one of the best ways to save money while growing medicinal plants. And, this will maximize yield in the long run.

2. Adjust Water Consumption

Overwatering tends to be an issue common among cultivators just transitioning from HPS or HID fixtures to LEDs. The reason is simple: when you use an HID lamp, you increase your water to compensate for the high levels of heat and infrared (IR) light generated by these bright lights. If you’re not careful, you run the risk of drying out your plants and soil.

LEDs on the other hand, generate very little heat and virtually no IR light, so be sure to scale back on your usual watering regimen.

3. Monitor Your Heat

Still on the subject of heat, cultivators using HIDs tend to rely on the high heat generated by these lamps when setting the ambient temperatures of their growing facility. On the other hand, LED lights hardly generate any heat. With LED grow lights, you need to be careful about your ambient temperature being too low, which again, can damage your grow.

The simple solution is to turn up your grow facility’s temperature. While this might mean your electricity consumption for heating would see an increase, the energy savings you get from your LED lighting should be enough to generate positive net savings.

4. Get Your Mounting Height Right

Again, because LEDs run cooler than other grow lighting solutions, how high (or low) you mount your grow lights goes a long way toward maintaining or increasing your yield and product quality.

While determining the ideal mounting height for your LEDs can be a complicated affair, with factors to consider including a number of bulbs and available of natural sunlight, a good rule of thumb is to ensure your LED grow lights generate a wide and even distribution of light.

Consider three things when mounting your LEDs:

Choose grow lights with a wide beam spread
Avoid mounting your LEDs too high as this can reduce each bulb’s intensity
Avoid mounting too low as this can damage your plants
Obviously, this takes a little bit of experimentation. Fortunately, most LED grow light manufacturers like ECO Farm include recommended mounting heights on the packaging/instruction manual to help cultivators in this matter.

5. Define Light Cycles

Light cycles are the hours of light and darkness a plant needs, stimulating photoperiod when needed. Growers can fully manage the light cycles, affecting the rhythm of the crop’s life. Whenever you are applying the lighting cycle strategies, you should consider the plant’s daily light requirement. The most common light cycle is 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness, suitable for flowers in the vegetative state. Another example of a popular light cycle is the 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness, that triggers flowering.

6. Use A Controller

You don’t want all your equipment running at full, all of the time. You use more power than you need to. You can also end up overdoing things, and using other bits of equipment to correct it.

You’re much better off using controllers. They’ll keep your grow room equipment on for the amount of time needed to maintain your optimum settings.

They often have soft-start technology, too, to prevent power surges.

Recommendation: Best LED Grow Lights For Your Money

1. ECO Farm MB4 880W Master/Station Version Spectrum Tunable Samsung Chips LED Grow Light Strips +UV IR

ECO Farm Master/Station version foldable LED fixture, with 8 bars, could evenly cover 4’X4’ and 5X5’ area.
Actual 880W light, provide powerful and quality light to the plant.
High-efficiency full spectrum light strips: Using Samsung white chips and Osram red chips, could up to 2.8 μmol/J, PPF up to 2184 μmol/s.
Master version light with built-in LCD color screen, showing the detailed status of the fixture and its group members. Such as
dimming percentage, wattage, amps, PPF value, spectrum, timer status.
Highlight: Built-in a control system on Master, with a step-less dimmer and five-step timer. One Master can control up to 50pcs of Stations. In other words, any changes made in Master will sync across all the connected Stations.
Spectrum Tunable. There are four types of spectrum built-in this fixture, it provides a suitable spectrum for different stages of medicinal plant growth, such as V1 for VEG stage, F1 for the flowering stage, FS for the last two weeks of flowering.
UV/IR enhanced bars was easy to install/uninstall from the fixtures. Item was our most creative mechanism design that enables you the most time-saving and convenient way to install the fixture.

2. ECO Farm 240W/480W Dimmable Quantum Board With Samsung 301H Chips + UV IR Red Version

Full-spectrum Samsung 301H 3500K + Red 660nm + UV+IR
High Efficacy: 2.6 umol/j
High Yielding: Up to 2.2g/ watt
Lower cost & high efficiency higher yields
Superior full spectrum
Well made & solid construction
Water-resistant
Thick heat sink

3. ECO Farm Spliced 100W Quantum Board Green Type With Samsung 281B Chips

Input voltage: AC 100-270VAC
LED Chips: using Samsung 281B chips with luminous efficiency up to 2.5umol/j
Driver: select high-quality UL certified power supply
Spectrum: Full Spectrum 3000K, 5000K, 660NM, 730NM, 380NM
Splicable, small size, high power, support for input series connection
Warranty: 3 years
Certification: CE RoHS FCC
Heat dissipation performance: 4.0MM thick aluminum plate radiator, fast heat conduction, low temperature
Application environment: can be used in dry/humid greenhouse