Are LED Grow Lights worth the money? 2020 Updated

For the last 50+ years, indoor cannabis cultivators have used High Pressure Sodium (HPS grow lights) 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.

LED grow lights are great because they are energy-efficient, durable, and have ‘tuned’ light spectrums to best meet the plant’s needs. However, there are still many excellent fluorescent grow lights that are much cheaper and still contribute to wonderful plant growth.

How Do LED Grow Lights Work?

LED grow lights use two different types of semiconductor materials to create their own spectrum of light. The first semiconductor has negative charges –electrons-, whereas the second one has positive charges called holes.

They pass light energy through semiconductor chips to emit their spectrum of light unlike other grow lights which use filaments, gas, mercury or lead to produce light.

In comparison, LED grow lights are energy efficient, versatile and more durable than incandescent lights. In addition, they also better for the environment.

Faster Growth Cycles?

Plants that are grown indoors without the exposure to environmental cues do not follow regular planting seasons. With LED lights, one can provide different wavelengths of light to facilitate different plant processes for 24 hours a day.

This allows the farmer to influence the behavior and season of the plants. When using LED light on auto-flowering plants, growers can influence flowering times in plants to increase production. This creates the possibility of having multiple harvests in one season.

Obviously, the indoor cannabis industry is expanding rapidly and this expansion raises deep environmental concerns. More power is being used for indoor lighting, and for the cooling required by this lighting. Power systems are being taxed beyond forecasts and in some cases, beyond the capabilities of the infrastructure and power companies’ ability to produce and deliver electricity.  Some states have proposed cannabis-related legislature to limit power consumed per square foot, and some are specifically requiring that LEDs be used to grow cannabis. While some business leaders and cultivation operators may groan at the acquisition cost and change in operating procedures when deploying LEDs, common sense states that it is imperative we produce cannabis applying the most environmentally friendly practices available.

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.