GROWING WITH LED - If to LED, how to do it?

In the last article we briefly discussed some issues over different phi­losophies concerning the manufacturing of LED panels. In this article, we’ll briefly discuss how different LEDs can be used in different ways, and we’ll take a look at four interesting models that are currently available in the market.
The mistake most growers do regarding LED lights is assuming that by just chang­ing their lights, everything else should remain the same. This is definitely not so. Most people try to accommodate new lights into their already existing grows neglecting the fact that the change they are undertaking into their grow space is the most major one.
The problem is being exacerbated as a lot of people are really confused over the subject of LED panels. Hobbyists but also industry professionals, are ready to confer opinions without having even tried to grow with LEDs, just by having red some­where or because someone sometime told them that they are inefficient. We could go along with that argument, then again we’d have to say that the MacBook Pro where I’m currently writing this article is a piece of crap just because back in ‘99 I bought a pentium II at 300 GHz for 1,200 quid! Well guess what, technology does move forward, just take a look at your mobile phone!
Passive and active cooling.
Passive cooling will suit the micro-grow­er, the one who’s using an area of about one square meter or less. Passive cooling means that there is no need for sufficient headroom where the fans will be directing the heat, instead will be easily dissipated into the environment and will be absorbed by the typical ventilation that’s required anyway. The suggested setup for this type of grower would be numerous panels of low wattage spread around in the grow­tent/area to cover the plants at a close distance. For such a grow, the preferred design would be a nice heatsink with a simple circuit board on top of it, nicely bolted obviously in order to have good contact between the circuit board and the heatsink, over which board are positioned the LED lights, single or maximum 3 watt diodes either without lenses or with wide angle lenses in order to avoid concentra­tion of light and have a much better diffu­sion on the spectrum.
Growers that utilise more space have more options in hand. Obviously they can also use passive cooling panels however that might prove be quite a drag for them. Covering a large space with the type of panels I’ve mentioned above will be quite a lot of work and things might go out of hand. However by utilizing larger space and having larger headroom they can go for larger wattage on their panels, with 3 or even 5 watt diodes and active cooling provided they have also sufficient head­room and some increased air circulation in their grow area. In fact it’s still the same approach as the micro-grower however on a larger scale that allows for more watts per panel and active cooling on the

Cannabisculture