Lighting can play a significant role in transforming the potential of your growing space. In fact, with the right lighting, you can fundamentally change your profits and yields with the right grow lights and methodologies.
In controlled environments, you can manage your lighting systems to adapt to how you’ve set up your growing spaces, optimising not just plant output, but light spectrum and quality of plant yield. All of these factors balance on a fine tightrope of location, light, temperature, plant requirement and time of year, but with grow lights, you can tune these elements to suit your needs and maximise your profits. Here’s how…
1. Select the right lighting system with LED grow lights
There are different types of LED grow lights available on the market, and each type has its pros and its cons. The most commonly used grow lights have been high-pressure sodium (HPS) grow lights that use sodium to produce light. These lights tend to use a lot of power and can get very warm which means you have to invest in additional environmental controls to manage the overall temperature of the grow space. That said, HPS lights are efficient and support the growth cycle.
LED grow lights have become the most popular type of grow lights over the past few years due to their energy efficiency, temperature, and light spectrum functionality. These lights can be installed in a custom framework that not only optimises light spectrum efficiency, but the overall growth cycle of the plants. They also last longer so they offer long-term value for money.
2. Invest in light uniformity for your grow lights
The use of LED grow lights to provide resilient lighting and uniformity to impact on plant growth has undergone plenty of research and a recent study on the use of uniformity in strawberry flower development showed that there is a strong relationship between the two. This makes investing in a solution that allows for you to accurately manage distribution, angle, quantity, spacing and light source invaluable. Consider working with a partner who has expertise in managing light frameworks and customising light placements like Light Science Technologies.
3. Focus on cost optimisation
Maximising yield can become an expensive task. This makes investing in tools and resources that are designed to minimise cost while maximising output an important factor when developing a grow space. Lighting is one of the biggest costs as it has to be correctly installed and managed, requires maintenance and replacement, and should leverage expert advice to ensure it is optimised correctly. These expenses are an investment into sustainable yield and growth volumes, but other costs can be managed to ensure that investment doesn’t eat into profit.
There’s a growing body of research around LED grow lights and how they can optimise costs for growers across multiple areas of the business. For example, a study undertaken by the University of Florida on LED lighting found that LED lighting can increase yield and quality and improve cost efficiency. While a report on LEDs for Energy Efficient Greenhouse Lighting found that LEDs can potentially be a far more energy efficient light source than some traditional options, but that it does require careful attention to design. Finally, in an article on LED Lighting Systems for Horticulture, the authors found that there is power use reduction per unit of light output, and cost decrease per unit of light output.
To correctly optimise your costs and to ensure that your LED grow lights achieve the best possible results, collaborate with Light Science Technologies. We have the tools, laboratory and research that will support you and we have the expertise of people who understand the innate workings LED grow lighting to provide you with a solution that works.
