Why white?

[Goony]

So I thought the whole point of led grow lights was to use red & blue so we don't waste power making light that the plants don't use ?

What am I missing?

Goony

[sdfoster22]

Because the white diodes produce more usable light than the red and blue diodes. And they are a lot more effecient than the reds and blues.

[Goony]

Thanks the

Goony

[FarmerLinus]

So I thought the whole point of led grow lights was to use red & blue so we don't waste power making light that the plants don't use ?

What am I missing?

Goony

There are studies out there that show the efficiency of various LEDs vs two HPS 1000W lamps. The study talks about what plants need in terms of wavelengths and photons. Red and blue, as you correctly stated, refers to those ‘extreme’ fequencies seen on the spectrum and are highly usable by plants in terms of vegetable growth stage(blue) and flowering state (red). They also found that even if plants were getting their correct wavelengths in order to produce plant food via photosynthesis, that they performed even better when getting more photons! They found that the best HPS 1000Ws were getting a photon efficiency ratio of 1.7 and some of the LED light fixtures were coming close to 1.7 but the vast majority had photon effiency ratios that were on par(no pun intended) with fluorescent light fixtures! I don’t remember if they tested any white LEDs, but according to some of the data sheets for the Samsung White LEDs LM301b. They can output a photon effiency of 2.85 or even 3.0 run at super low currents. Which is over double the best HPS...