First off, I would like to thank KNNA for the excellent postings; they are obviously well educated and versed in the subject manner. I wanted to address the stated issue that while the lamps may have a 100,000 hour life, the drivers do not. I disagree with this comment; if the drivers are properly designed for the application they should not have any issues with this stated life. Electronics generally are very reliable and have extremely long lives. If you look around your own homes Iā??m sure you can find some items that are 10 to 20 years old and still work just fine. A sweeping statement that the driver in 95% of induction light systems will not meet the life requirements is inappropriate. First and most fundamental is that there is not nearly enough data to support this comment. How could it possibly be clear that 95% will not meet the life statement when there are not any systems that have been in place that long and there certainly have not been so many failures of existing units to base such a statement?
I do not work with induction lights, so I would like to be drastic about their technical performance. I depend on this of what engineers working in the field tell me, not of first hand experience.

For what I understood, induction ballast problem is not due to converting AC input to energy used by the induction unit. This is managed by many electronic converters today at very high efficiencies. For long lives, only when spending on it, most Power Supplies expected life strongly depends of operating temperatures. When working on hot environments, as usually ballast on induction lights do, if you dont use expensive components, likely average life is well below 50Kh, often just 20Kh.

So PS life is strongly dependent of components used, and as far as I know, no any horticultural lamp in the market uses high quality, hot temperature rated components. Although technically possible, I have solid doubts any induction light on sale currently for the horticultural market use a PS with an actual expected life over 50Kh. Just a guess, but I believe that actually, majority of them are way shorter.

The main problem for induction lights, for what those working on them told me, is the low coupling efficency of coils used on the own induction process. Very low, with very high losses, minimal 25%. This seems to be the main problem and what lead to the big manufacturers to give up with this technology and follow other research paths. Those losses mean lots of heat, and heat is always a problem for reliability.

I agree with you that properly designed and built induction lamps may have its place and could be an excellent solutions for many cases. But market push for lower prices hard, and in this situation is not easy to offer it. Usually you get what you paid for, and I think most people are not willing to pay what a good designed and build with high quality components induction lamp cost
knna Reviewed by knna on . LED grow lights... input please. Hello guys, I'm exchanging eMails with a representative from a LED company. I asked him if they could produce a custom light for growing, and here's what he told me: Our options are as follow: 940nm, 850nm, 660nm, 630nm, 610nm, 590nm 570nm, 530nm, 510nm, 470nm, 460nm, 400nm and a total of 64 LEDs in the bulb. Rating: 5