Quote Originally Posted by knowboddy
I'm not asking people to personally teach me everything there is to know about lighting. I know a fair amount myself already. I assume most growers have a done a fair amount of reading and searching for knowledge on the subject. But if my debate with my buddy drove any point home its that if he believes differently than I do as strongly as he does, there's got to be more information and even more different opinions out there. At least some of them are bound to be worth consideration, wouldn't you agree?

I'm just trying to initiate a conversation about lighting that, to someone willing to consider everyone else's viewpoints, might just help those who already know a bit to learn a bit more. If you don't want to participate that's fine. Maybe you know everything already, or at least as much as you care to know, and that's fine too.

There's a lot of different ways to look at grow lights. What's the cheapest, what's the most powerful in terms of final yield. What is the most efficient considering heat production and/or watts per useful light output. And there's more than a single opinion out there for every possible measuring stick. I think most people (probably) would agree that strictly speaking from a how much you yield point of view you can't really beat HPS, watt for watt. LED's are getting better all the time, some people say they're better. Some people swear by plasma or induction lights.

I'm just hoping to get people discussing things constructively, what their experience is or what they've heard. Maybe I get to learn something new and change my perspective. Maybe everyone does. Maybe no one does.

But it's not going to hurt you or anyone else to talk about lights, is it? I'm not twisting any arms. If you like, do. If you don't, don't. No biggie.
LOL... didn't like my response eh? OK, let me try it this way. For me T5HO made sense. It gave me the lumens that I wanted, the initial start up costs that I could afford and the heat management problems that I was willing to take on. When I bought them, they made the most sense and for me, were the "best" lights. This however would have been an unacceptable choice for many others out there.

Nowadays, I am seeing the benefits of having a bit more light in my grow room. So I did my research, much like you are beginning to do here. What I learned made me lean toward LED technology. Dollar per watt comparisons of total lifetime costs of running LED vs any other light system convinced me that this was the right move. I am now building my LED lights to work as supplements to my existing T5HO arrays and wish to achieve the equivalent of a 1000w setup eventually, but with a much smaller heat and electrical footprint. I can give you many reasons that LED is the superior light system out there, but if you consider cost and the over priced commercially available equipment on the market today, you could argue that the cost is prohibitive.

My point in the last post was that this being said, there are going to be 37 people out there who will not agree with me and who may chime in here and tell you why MH or HPS are superior. Ultimately, you will have to weigh all the information given to you and decide which application is best for YOUR situation. No one can answer that for you with the data so far provided. I hope this doesn't offend you, but it is my best answer to your questions.