Apparently red LEDs are 60% more efficient than fluorescent light when growing vegetables hydroponically.
According to IEEE Spectrum Online: Of all the colors of the rainbow, red is lettuce’s favorite. Chlorophyll, the electrochemical engine of photosynthesis, runs on red photons. So if you are growing the vegetable indoors in a factory, why waste energy on colors you don’t need?
Using a red LED-based growth process developed by Cosmo Plant Co., in Fukuroi, Japan, instead of a fluorescent lighting based one, cuts a factory’s electric bill by 60 percent, the company told Agence France Press.
Cosmo’s customers uses the technology to produce 7000 heads of lettuce per day all year round in a 10-floor building on just 1000 square meters of space. The lettuce matures more than three times as fast under the LEDs than outdoors. While growing lettuce in an open field is still less costly, growing it inside under LEDs means you don’t have to worry about crop-decimating typhoons and other nasty weather.
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Now imagine a thousand story building growing lettuce in this way. Let’s put it underground. Let’s do this around the world — under the deserts, under the oceans, under the mountains — everywhere! You could imagine feeding a whole lot of people — far more than the 9 billion estimated by 2050.
I would like to know what type of LED light was used and the basics of the application (i.e. 1 LED light stuck in a hole every 2 inches in a board). I have found very few companies offering Grow Lights for plants made with LED lights but they are very expensive. I would rather build my own with 1w LEDs if it is possible.
I found a long discussion about using red LEDs for hydroponics here.
Red LEDs to Grow Lettuce better
This is pretty neat- using
RED LED makes veggies grow more efficiently.
Apparently red LEDs are 60% more efficient than fluorescent light when growing
vegetables hydroponically…
Entire story here [metaefficient.com]
Now imagine a thousand story building growing lettuce in this way.
Sure. Now, imagine the energy and water consumption of thousand story buildings growing lettuce underground. While this is certainly wonderful technology, until we have renewable, cheap, non-globally-polluting energy sources, solutions such as this are not viable for feeding the world.
…Now imagine a world in revolt because all they have to eat is lettuce.
I hate lettuce, especially iceberg lettuce, which is as nutritional as cardboard — it’s an insult to the patrons of the resturants that serve it.
Hopefully this technology works for tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, and peppers, because I like those. And if we want to save the world, it has to work with potatoes, rice, soy and wheat, because that’s what most people eat. And corn-syrup for all us fattiest in the US.
http://lox.powerblogs.com/posts/1114280617.shtml
The best link hover I’ve seen in years (ok, maybe ever) is on metaefficient.com (just hold your mouse over any link).
When link hovers were starting to come into fashion (around 2000 or so, when the…
lmao
some tool linked this to overgrow.com
u little florou kiddie gonna grow with ur LED light now?
…Now imagine a world in revolt because all they have to eat is lettuce.
…Joshua, you just made me LOL so hard I scared the cat.
I really want to grow using LED’s. Their heat and power consumption is so much lower compared to traditional HID lights.
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