Are Modular LED Grow Lights the Future of Indoor Gardening?

September 24, 2016

Are Modular LED Grow Lights the Future of Indoor Gardening?

Are Modular LED Grow Lights the Future of Indoor Gardening?

More LED companies are jumping on the modular bandwagon these days, offering smaller daisy-chained or networked LED grow lights.  What are the benefits of these types of lights versus using a single light to illuminate an indoor garden?  Let’s find out by taking a look at how light is distributed. A single light emits from a central point or area (LED Panel) whereas multiple light setups will emit light from several points or areas. It seems pretty obvious that multiple lights sources could potentially cover the canopy more evenly. But what about light intensity, will using smaller less powerful lights give the plants less light? The simple answer is not necessarily. Let’s take a 4’ X 4’ grow tent with an 800-watt LED light. We know from experience that this light setup will do very well in this grow space. Compare this to four 200-watt LED lights with identical spectrum to the 800-watt light spread out evenly in the same space. As a whole, they use the same amount of power and emit the same light intensity only spread out. In this setup, there are four 2’ X 2’ quadrants.  When using a single light source the canopy in the middle has no shadows and illuminated very well, however as we move outward towards the edge of the tent shadows do appear even with light bouncing off the sides of the grow tent’s reflective surface. This is more prevalent in the flowering stage of growth when the flowers are protruding up from the canopy create a more uneven surface to illuminate. This is where having multiple grow lights can really make a difference.  Since the light is emitted from multiple directions using a multi-LED light panel setup there are fewer shadows and the light can also penetrate the canopy directly from different directions adding more photons to areas that are otherwise less lit from a single light source.  In addition to the even light coverage the four LED grow lights in our test intersect and combine their respective luminosity increasing PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) throughout the 4x4 grow tent’s space.

Head on over to GrowersLights to check out their entire selection of LED grow lights including modular LED lights from:

California Lightwork’s SolarStorm 550

Amare Technologies SE250

Johnson Grow Lights CX-4 

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