Its easy to confuse ad hype with facts, expecially with all the snake oil flying around in the hydroponics market.

Anyone else watch the Penn and Teller Bullshit! episode on showtime last week about numbers?? You have to be careful on this stuff and realize that just about everyone with a buisness permit wants to make you buy their products and they can cook up numbers likewise.

Flouro pushers like to compair "over the life of the bulb" and "mean lumens" to compair ever so wrongly thier products to HID. Its no secret that HID bulbs only last an effective 5000-8000 hrs or so before they should be replaced. Florecent bulbs continue to put out decent light for almost 20k hours. See the graph posted below.

Here is the manufacturers actual data comparison:

-Metal Hallide:
Mean Lumens: 23,500
Relative Mean Light Output: 100%
Mean lm/W : 51

-4 Lamp T5 HO setup
Mean Lumens: 28,400
Relative Mean Light Output: 121%
Mean lm/W : 77

WOW! What great numbers for flouros??? I thought it couldnt be possible!! NOT...

The trick is to look at the way they spin this. They calculate averages over 20k hours for all bulbs, even though HPS and MH would NEVER be used that long. Take a look at the graph and see what you would rather spend $.10 per kw/hr generating for the next 8000 hours or so.

Flourecent lights have come a LONG way in the last decade but not that far.. nor will they probably ever. If you want an alternate lighting solution try LED's. They are pricy right now but the cost in electricity savings and their 50k hr lifespan will bring them down in price in the next couple of years. They also only generate specific light colors and can be set directly to the cloroplast reactive spectrums with little to no light outside of which. I am using a 7,500k 60 LED bulb in an experiment to feminize plants. We will see what happens.
Aaron385 Reviewed by Aaron385 on . Light intensity? Does equal wattage of flouros give as much light intensity as a MH or HPS? For instance, is a 100w flouro equal to a 100w MH in the vegging stage? Could you replace one with the other without affecting crops? Rating: 5