xenon headlamps - what am i missing?

Apologies in advance for the noobness of my question. So i'm doing research into the optimum lamp / price ratio for my first indoor grow, and i started wondering if HID (xenon) headlamps would be a viable alternative to *standard* HID lamps... i copypasta'd this FYI:

Xenon Bulb Specification:

Power consumption: 35watts
Luminous flux: 2200~3200
Service Life: Up To 3000hrs
Mercury purity is 99.999999%
Waterproof and vibration resistant
Quartz glass of silicon dioxide for headlight protection

Xenon Headlight Color Temperature 6000K:

Xenon bulbs - 6000K has an approximately 3200lm output, which is 3x the light output of the traditional halogen light and slightly less light output compared to the 5000K. Although it has a bit lesser light output, it emits pure whiter light with very slight and barely noticeable tint of blue and purple.

---

now unless i'm missing something terribly, terribly obvious here, slapping a few of these puppies in a stealth grow would give you MH quality light for CFL price??

what is the lumen, or better yet the PAR rating? This would be useful in determining the efficiency.

That is quite a lot of lumens per bulb, but here are the drawbacks as I see them.

1. up to 3000 hours life... that is up to 8 months... so you are going to be replacing these a lot.
2. fairly narrow output pattern, so you will need more than one.
3. 12v at 35 watts x however many you try to run... have you priced a high power 12v power supply lately?

Emmie

i'm afraid there wasn't much else given in the way of technical data - not anything like the specs the give you when buying 'normal' lamps / lights...

from what i can tell, there's an output of 3200 lumen from 35 watts (91 lumen / watt) at a colour temp of 6000. no idea on the PAR rating.

Seems like it could work. Someone may try it someday and find out.

OldMac and I had a rather detailed conversation one day regarding using the little halogen lights along with traditional lights. It turns out that there is a large spike of the deep red in their spectrum and that they are very effective as "trigger" lights, used for 30 minutes at the beginning and end of the light period to simulate sunrise and sunset to reduce stretching.
I would be very curious to see what was in the "white" spectrum of these headlights and how much of it was in the effective grow ranges and try to guess what effects they would have in the normal growth cycle of a plant. I am afraid that upon careful inspection you would find that as far as the plant was concerned, a normal grow light would be more efficient than a light designed to be brightest to the human eye. As Shovelhandle said, someday someone will try it and let us know what they find out.

in the instance I recall halogen has been tried and was not effective

"now unless i'm missing something terribly, terribly obvious here, slapping a few of these puppies in a stealth grow would give you MH quality light for CFL price??"

I would not call it terribly obvious, but you are missing a few important details.

Study this for a while;

Outdoor Lighting - efficiency and cost data


Even this is not as complete as it could/should be.

A lot of that cheap light is wasted.
The infrared emitted limits proximity to the canopy.
6000k is good for vegging, but not suitable for bud building.
Unabsorbed/unused photons = wasted Watts.

The chart uses Lumens, not PAR.
We see lumens, plants see PAR. (Actually we see both, but the efficiency curves differ.)
Lumens are a useful measurement and give a good indication of overall brightness for most purposes.
But PAR, (Photosynthetically active radiation), is more useful for growers.
If you factor in the PAR sensitivity curve, LEDs jump to the front of the line.

LEDs can put all of their energy into the most efficient wavelengths.
On the strength of that argument, I tried them.
Been using them for about 6 years now.
Proved it to myself, and saved thousands in lighting costs.

That said, I still try to keep an open mind.
If you want to put those halogens up against any other light source in a proper side by side test.
I'm all eyes.
Would love to find a better alternative.

The lesson is?

Get ALL the details, then decide. :D

Aloha,
Weezard