Over the past few years, LED grow lights have grown to become the industry standard, and as the technology matures, the latest additions are evolving to fit into new areas of your grow-spaces. In this blog, we’ll introduce a selection of next-generation LEDs that have currently got us excited.
Budget Units
One of the few advantages of old-school HPS lighting is the low barrier to entry in terms of cost. You can get up and running for as little as £74.95 by picking up a digital lighting kit. LEDs are superior in almost every way, but they do come at a higher cost and will require a larger initial outlay.
Luckily, the team at Omega Lighting have the solution. If you’re on a tight budget, you can dip your toe in the water with a Spectra LED for as little as £139.95. Don’t be fooled by the prices – these things pack some serious punch. Watt for watt, you can expect them to blow HPS lighting out of the water. A number of our customers developed a level of scepticism about LED grow lights after getting their fingers burnt with earlier generations, which were less efficient and simply didn’t deliver as promised. If we encounter customers with this mindset, we recommend adding an Omega Spectra to their existing set-up as supplementary lighting. The results speak for themselves, and they’ll inevitably be back to upgrade the rest of their lighting once they see the dramatic increase in quality and yield.
Cloning and Propagation
The latest generation of cloning and propagation LEDs is helping growers to improve their turnaround times and success rates with cuttings and seedlings. As is the case with every LED that we stock, they feature much broader outputs than HID lighting - in this instance tuned towards the blue areas of the spectrum. T5s have been the go-to propagation lights for decades, and they've done us proud, but the industry has now moved on, and Omega Clone LED Strips and LUMii Envirogro TLEDs blow them clean out of the water in terms of performance, growth rates and energy efficiency.
Omega Clone LED Strips are designed to replace Sunblaster T5 style units. They are a big favourite among popular growers on social networks, and our customers can't get enough of them. These strips deliver just the right intensity for young plants, promoting rapid development during their most vulnerable stages. Luxx build their units with commercial growers in mind, and for this reason, up to 100 strips can be daisy-chained together. There’s also a 5-year manufacturer’s warranty to give you complete peace of mind; not that you'll need to use it - Luxx products are built to extremely high standards.
LUMii Envirogro TLEDs are replacements for LightWave T5 units. At only 9 watts per tube, TLEDs use even less power than their fluorescent counterparts, which were pretty economical to begin with. They cover relatively large areas and sit nicely over the top of medium or large propagators, with 2-lamp and 4-lamp options available. Price-wise, TLEDs are pretty much on a par with their T5 counterparts, making them truly exceptional value for money.
Like-For-Like Replacements for High-Frequency Commercial Lighting
Commercial growers who are still attached to 400v high-frequency HPS lighting will be pleased to hear that Gavita’s new LED fixture, the CT 2000e, matches the footprint and intensity of a 1000w 400v fixture exactly, while using 25% less power! This has a huge impact on your total energy costs - one of your biggest outgoings when growing indoors, particularly if you're growing at larger scales. And this all comes at a time when electricity bills are generally on the increase.
The research and development team at Gavita have utilised state-of-the-art LEDs and optics to create a light spread with almost perfect uniformity. These units are built for use in industrial grow operations, so they're easy to clean and maintain, and they're built to last. Some growers prefer this type of LED over spider-style units because they can be easier to work around when running larger numbers of lights. You can slot these fixtures seamlessly into existing 1000w Gavita HPS set-ups, so they represent another great way to make the transition to LED technology. As you'd expect, they are fully compatible with Gavita Master Controllers, so you can regulate a roomful of them from a central point, while taking advantage of an array of features.
