Looking for a trial LED light grow?

[kg5]

Can see grow lights are leaping & bounding as more effective products.

Looking to purchase a LED light to test out if it is viable to use these light in a larger way. Have picked out a number of trail plants. How far the lights are needed to be away from the plants is a question as well?

My plants like 70% shade. My temperature is of no concern it is good all year round. Humidity is great as well. They will have controlled water and it all lives outside.

The bush house has sunlight for only 10 weeks per year the rest is total shade.

Looking at solar panels and there is a need for a power consumption meter?

[estación seca]

Lots of questions there. Products available vary between countries. My suggestion would be to talk to commercial growers in your country who already depend on LEDs to bring in money. Here in the US cannabis growers are usually very knowledgeable.

[kg5]

Thank you estación seca.

The cannabis growers do seem to be the ones setting the pace with light development. Sadly their retailers prices for their goods is way over priced because they are high budget, cash in hand buyers.

These growers need high powered direct sunlight to get the crop into the high quality area.

The big piece of info that has got me looking at lights is they no longer need reflector walls around the lights. The new lights are directed straight at the plants.

Can search heaps of info. Its is time to hit the sellers as you have suggested. Yes lights are very different here in Australia. Prices swing wildly from super cheap to mega bucks.

[Ray]

FWIW, a few years back I invested in some Philips Greenpower "Production Units", figuring that something usable in indoor farming must be pretty good.

I went with the white/deep red color as I wanted the plants to appear normal. They are about 4' long and put out about 85 micromoles per second (about 3500 lumens). I typically ran them 14 hrs/day.

I set two of them up in an enclosed chamber 3' deep by 6' long by 3' tall, with the lamps about 2' above the floor, and adjustable upward.

The plants in it - paphs, phals, encyclias, catleyas and a number of other genera, including a leafless species or two - did quite well.

[thefish1337]

Originally Posted by kg5

Can see grow lights are leaping & bounding as more effective products.

Looking to purchase a LED light to test out if it is viable to use these light in a larger way. Have picked out a number of trail plants. How far the lights are needed to be away from the plants is a question as well?

My plants like 70% shade. My temperature is of no concern it is good all year round. Humidity is great as well. They will have controlled water and it all lives outside.

The bush house has sunlight for only 10 weeks per year the rest is total shade.

Looking at solar panels and there is a need for a power consumption meter?

check out HLG 65 or HLG 100 on amazon. extremely bright and efficient and can easily cover a 3 x 3 area or larger for medium to low light requiring orchids. funny enough the light uses half as much as any cheap chinese "300w equivalent 130 watt actual" and puts out almost 25% more ppf. plus they have warranties and will last >10,000 hours. obviously most people use these lights for growing... other things indoors but they work exceptionally well for all houseplants.

they also have the added benefit of having a white spectrum which is nice on the eyes and gives the plants a higher quality spectrum than any blurple or fluorescent/metal halide/hps. these lights also emit plenty of green light which has morphological benefits as well as a greater ability to penetrate into your plants.

the height at which you hang your lights above your orchids depends on the intensity of light and what your orchid can tolerate-

if you want to properly figure out the light levels your orchids do well at - get a legitimate PAR sensor and measure the natural light when your orchids are growing at their best throughout the day and generate an average PAR over the light cycle. you could get fancy and convert this into a more scientific value called the day light integral (DLI) which will give you amount of photo-synthetically active photons per day your plants do best at. you can then add supplement lighting during the darker months to maintain that PAR or DLI measurement when you lose your natural sunlight with supplemental lighting. the nice thing with orchids is that most do not need a ton of light so you can hang these new LEDS high and cover large areas and still meet the orchid's light needs especially with the aid of passive light in the greenhouse.

alternatively you can add supplemental lighting and do the guess and check method. guess how much light you need to add with supplemental lighting and if your orchids turn purple/light green or burn you reduce the light. this is the method I have been using because I have no need for PAR meter. drawbacks are that your orchids may become stressed or damaged if you are too liberal with your supplemental lighting and you happen to have an unexpected sunny day... just my experience. currently growing with a 4000k HLG 65 and a 200w 3500k COB led light. have flowered and grown all types of orchids, cacti, plumeria and many other tropical plants using modern LED tech. there is no comparison in efficiency and quality of light.