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Induction Lamps [Revolution in Marijuana Cultivation?]

Blowmonkey

Blowmonkey

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A new type of lamps has hit the market.. They're called "Induction Lamps", here's a piece of pretty helpful text from a website I cannot link to since it's a source:
Q: How many kinds of induction lamps exists within your induction lamp range? What are the wattages?
  • The 1st type is the compact design, that means tube and ballast are combined together with a lamp base E27. The wattage is 40W and the 20W compact induction lamp is already in the testing.
  • The 2nd type is the separated design "O" shape Saturn lamp. Main wattages are: 40W, 80W and 120W, it is now a very mature product on the production line.
  • The 3rd type is the separated design (lamp and ballast separately) "¡õ" (rectangular) shape Smart Dragon lamp. The. wattages are 40w, 80W, 120W, 150W and 200W. We mainly supply the high wattages of 150w and 200W.
  • The 4th type is the stereoscopic design Smile Dragon induction lamp. Wattages are:150W and 200W. These lamps are not yet on the mass production line.
Q: How long is the life time of the whole lamp system?
As the lamps are made without filaments and without electrodes, the LVD electromagnetic induction lamp provides the unprecedented super life time longer than 10 years or 60.000 hours, equal to 30 years of normal night time operation and it is virtually maintenance-free.
Q: How about the light technical data?
When the color temperature is from 3500k to 4000k, the color rendering index (CRI) is above 90.The high CRI makes it looks very bright, very soft, clear and natural. Meanwhile since it's luminous efficiency is above 80Lm/W, color rendering is perfect; it avoids the problem of color differentiation, makes it more bright and more energy saving than any other lamp of the same wattage.
Q:How about the LVD induction lamps electric technical data?
The power factor of ballast is above 0.99, much higher than all the other light source, thus more energy saving. Generally, the power factor of electric ballast is around 0.6 to 0.85, the power factor of induction ballast is around 0.4 to 0.5. LVD induction lamps provides the wide voltage from 100V to 270V , the voltage fluctuation will not affect the lamps operation. It has the constant power output function, that ensures a constant luminous flux without brightness wave. Because of the very high frequency there is no flickering effect
Q. What is the working situation when induction lamps start?
As the lamps have no filaments or electrodes they can be switched on/off frequently. In the meantime, it has the self-protection function in case of short-circuit. Whenever you turn on/off, there is no damage for bulb and ballast even when short ¨Ccircuit happens. As there are no electrodes, the lamps do not need the pre-heating for filaments. The lamps can quickly start. It's normal phenomenon with the amalgam that it will change from warm white color to white color when starting within several minutes and then it will become normal white color.
Q. What is the lumen maintenance for Induction Lamps?
They have been tested in the laboratory for one year. The light decline phenomenon is not obvious. As there are no electrodes, the two ends of the tube will not become black like the common fluorescent tube which has the electrodes on the double ends. The induction lamps will keep their lumen output and will not depreciate by 20-30% like other fluorescent light sources do after 6 months operation. According to the initial test, light decline ratio of induction lamps is 15-20% after 10-year operation, and as such it will be the most lumen maintaining lamp in the world
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So, for the people that DO understand what the benefits of these lamps are, are you gonna switch from HPS or fluoro's to this one? Seems to me they save money like crazy.
 
I don't know exactly, but saving on energy is certainly not the only advantage.. Main advantage is that these lamps have a life time of over 60.000 hour, compared to fluoro's (10.000 hour) and HPS systems (8.000 hour) this is ridiculously high! They also generate almost no heat, so you can basically put them on top of the leaves without burning them, a lot more light is able to reach the plant that way.

The 3500 degrees Kelvin induction lamp has the best spectrum for the flowering period, the 6500K is better for veg. 3 200 Watt lamps is expected to be more efficient as a 600 Watt HPS. Sounds too good to be true, though, it's true..
 
so can one expect simmilar lummens per watt with these as compared to MH or HPS?
 
Basically they're fluorescents, but the energy to stimulate photon emmission is applied via a high freq RF field rather than striking an arc between two electrodes.

The power transfer efficiency of this unit is as high as 98%.
Click to expand...

If that's not just hype from the firms producing them, they'll piss all over HP sodium lamps. You can get different phosphors to produce light of just about any wavelength you want (as opposed to the orange/yellow you get from HPS); they'll also run a lot cooler than HPS lamps (no pesky infra-red hotspot for police in helicoptors to spot & come and ruin your day). Another consequence of the first two is that you'll use a shit-load less electricity (small bills & another way for the police to look for large cannabis cultivation setups foiled).

Basically a godsend for indoor growers!
 
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Bulb longevity: Fantastic.
Ballast efficiency: Fantastic.
Light per watt: Only fair as far as the tube goes (comparable to fluorescents), but the ballast savings will go a long way to make up the difference and then some. I suspect a good purely electronic ballast driving compact fluorescents would be comparable in efficiency.

Which leaves two questions: Cost and scalability. It looks like there may never be a true large HID-equivilent unit (say, 400-1000W or more), so you'd probably need to use a cluster of smaller bulbs. No biggee. BUT...what do they cost? Has anybody seen prices on ballast/bulb/fittings?

While this may reduce heat production it won't necessarily be a night-and-day difference, although if you've been using magnetic ballasts you might see your power bills and heat production cut almost in half. (If it hums while running or flashes during start-up, it's magnetic. Electronic ballasts are instant-on, flicker-free and dead quiet.)

Unless the grow room is well insulated and/or well ventilated it's still probably going to be a bit hot to infrared. In the US that's no longer considered sufficient evidence for a search warrant, but that doesn't meant they can't use the infrared cameras to select houses/people to be investigated by other means, so it could still be an issue.
 
Yep, sounds great, but it's basically all talk and no action. In theory everything should be right, but in reality it isn't. I've seen a lot of test-grows over the last year and none convinced me of it's supposed potential. The only good things about them are their, as already mentioned, the lamps lifetime and the non-existant heat generation, they produce about as much or even less heat than fluoro's.

They claim to produce a wider and better spectrum of light but all of the different bulbs fail during the flowering cycle, they're great for vegging, you get healthy and compact plants, but the light penetration isn't great enough and they prolong the flowering cycle by as much as a whole month or something. A few other things are that they don't even come with a reflective hood, so you loose a lot of light efficiency anyways and they're way too expensive, last I checked was 200 euro's for a 200W.
 
Surely though they'd be able to produce a tube that just outputs in the orange-yellow region of the visible spectrum just like HPS lamps?.

I'm wondering if the orange/yellow ones at present output more than negligable amounts of blue light and that's why they extend the growing cycle. I've always thought that HPS was best for flowering as in the wild, flowering takes place in the autumn when the sun sits lower in the sky (and as the light has to pass through more atmosphere, causing more of the blue & other shorter wavelengths to be scattered meaning it's mostly red/orange/yellow light that gets through ) and the HPS more closely reproduces the colour of the light then - as well as reducing the photoperiod.

If there's too much blue light the plant probably 'thinks' it's still summer, so remains in the vegitative state for longer.

There are also some lamps that use sulphur and produce up to 3.5kW per unit, but they also use magnetrons (the thing inside your microwave oven that generates the microwaves), so possibly not any real benefit over the HPS lamps.

Anybody interested in the whys & wherefores of how they work, here's a link

http://www.ecmweb.com/mag/electric_rf_lighting_tunes/
 
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