Are LED Grow Lights Worth It?

Better understanding of cannabis-related photobiology is helping LED grow light manufacturers produce lighting that increases crop yields and perhaps more importantly, cannabis quality.

There really is no question that Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) work, but how well do they work?

For more than 50 years, indoor cannabis cultivators have used High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights to illuminate their flowering crops. This technology was developed for, and is still used, as street lighting and there really hasn’t been a fundamental change to the output in the last half century.

We often wonder why this technique is used to grow cannabis.The answer to this question is simple: 1) Because of strict legislation and even stricter penalties for growing cannabis, growers are more inclined to move their crops indoors, and 2) there really hasn’t been another technology that would allow us to cheaply place 400, 600, or even 1000W of light on a crop. Although the HPS technique is rich in red light at some frequencies, it is important for flowering crops. However, HPS has some disadvantages, such as high heat output in the lighting spectral range and lack of other "colors". In fact, as much as 95% of the light produced by HPS lamps is in the infrared range, which we call heat.

Enter the Light Emitting Diode. LED technology showed great promise to solve some of the primary drawbacks to the use of HPS technology for indoor cannabis cultivation. The ability to manipulate spectrum, precision delivery of light, elimination of dangerous heat, and lack of substantive toxic chemical makeup are a few reasons to deploy LEDs.

LED efficacies have increased to levels far greater than any other lighting technology. Broad spectrum white and narrow-frequency LEDs in all visible (and some invisible to the human eye) colors are being produced with great precision and consistency. Quality control in manufacturing is at an all-time high and longevity of LEDs has been proven by the passage of time since their introduction as illumination sources.

As the world embraces LED horticultural lighting, probably the most encouraging news is that current and upcoming generations of cannabis growers are more receptive to new ideas and are much more tech-savvy than their predecessors. Better understanding of cannabis-related photobiology is helping LED grow light manufacturers produce lighting that increases crop yields and perhaps more importantly, cannabis quality. As we continue to uncover the vast medical potential of cannabis, precise phytochemical composition and consistent quality will become all-important.