Advice need for LED lights
 

I'm going to improve the lighting system of my orchidarium. Current setup: 3 pcs T8 Osram Fluora, 30W, 1000 lumen/ each.
I'd like to replace them to LED lights. Could you please propose some LED solution for me? I really appreciate any concrete help (e-bay link, etc)
Thanks.

I don't know the brands available in Europe, but I hear good things about this:
Led growlight, 65 watt
It uses good components (Cree XBD).

Ray brought this up, but Philips GreenPower series seems to have pretty good efficiency, too. Maybe 2-4 of these?
Philips GreenPower LED Deep Red-White Flowering Lamp $55.00 Lighting First Rays Orchids

What's wrong with 3x Osram Fluora? Isn't it fairly efficient?

I have been using this brand of LED plant grow light since 2006:

Plant Efficiently with LED Grow Lights

I generally supplement the LED light with T5 to get the best of both worlds for me.

I also use one of these on a large fishbowl-style terrarium:

GE Lighting - LED12DP38S830/35 (66113) | Lightaroo!

Thanks for the quick reply, guys.

Naoki: This setup was efficient 3 years ago, but now the fixtures are in bad condition, and T8s are old and lost their original efficiency.

I read through Philips specification, I realized, there is no blue component on their spectrum. There is white instead of this.
Do I understand well? Is this the new trend that doesn't need blue component for grow chids? Sorry, looks like I'm not up to date :)

There are quite a few models of white+red recently (instead of multi-band based on red+blue). I think part of this is that the white diodes have been improving quicker in efficiency. White LEDs are basically blue LED with phosphor coating. So they have a blue peak + other color emitted from phosphor. The higher color temp (5000K) has less phosphor (a bit of simplification here), so you see more strong blue peaks.

If you take a look at the 2nd link in the thread I posted a while ago, you can see the efficiency of white+red is pretty high. Take a look at Table 3 (p.6).

Also in the same table, you'll notice that not all LEDs are efficient, and some of them are just barely better than T8 (higher value of 5-th column means better efficiency). Note that most of LED fixtures tested here are not the cheap end, but some models are older models. Especially Osram Fluoro is probably more efficient than the value listed for T8 in the table. So if you are thinking about getting cheap LED fixture, it might be better to replace T8 bulbs. The efficiency of the T8 ballast doesn't change much over time, does it?

If you can do DIY (pretty simple), you can save money. Cree CXA series (white chip-on-board LEDs, which is a bit newer technology) is very easy to use.

I forgot to mention this: there are linear style Philips GreenPower LED (I think the price is 120cm bar, 30W, is about $240 or less). I believe that Ray was thinking of getting these for his personal use. The spec. looks pretty good:
GreenPower LED - Philips

Advice need for LED lights
 

Check this out: http://firstrays.com/cart/Plant-Ligh...rium-Grow-Lamp

Ray Barkalow is a member and frequent contributor here and he owns this firm. This product is very good, reasonably priced, simply easy to install and it works.

Thank you, guys, I really appreciate your help.
Both Philips bulb and Ray's bulb look fine. I'll contact with Ray soon, hoping to ship to Europe :roll: