Keeping it Real- The true watts of LED Grow Lights.

Right from the inception of LED grow lights, manufacturers and sellers have exaggerated the wattage of LED grow lights. The main reason for this seems to be to compare them to HID lighting in an effort to claim that they can replace a HID light up to the claimed wattage. In most cases you will find that they cannot replace a HID light up to the exaggerated wattage and that the true wattage draw is only a fraction of what is stated.
 The thing is with watts, is its a unit of measurement of electricity consumption, its not a measurement of light output. Its comparable to stating how fast a car can go by stating its fuel consumption in miles per gallon. There is definite relevance with HID lights when it comes to watts and light output, but the same relevance does not exist for LED lights and the practice of overstating light wattages has made it very confusing for consumers. The practice of overstating LED grow light watts has been counter productive to the industry, with some electricity savvy consumers shying away from LED grow lights with wattage claims making them seem no more economical than HID lighting, and many consumers shying away from lights which state true power consumption, as they seem to be under powered in comparison to the exaggerated lights.
For many years there was a formula to exaggerate LED watts. The formula was quite simple and was to multiply the number of LED chips by the watt rating of the chip. For example, if a light had 100 5 watt chips, 100x5=500 watts and this would be stated as a 500 watt LED light. Where this formula is wrong though, is that LED chip ratings are the maximum the chip can handle and generally are run at around half of the rating. So in real terms, a 5 watt chip is consuming around 2.5 watts, so that 500 LED light is really only around a 250 watt LED light. At least this formula kept manufacturers and sellers in check to some degree, but it seems in recent years this has all gone out the window and wattage claims are where ever some sellers think they need to be to get sales. I have tested the power draw on many LED lights and some have been lower than 15% of the claimed wattage.
​ Its time for manufactures and sellers to start stating true power consumption and remove the confusion for consumers. One of the main draw cards for LED grow lights is meant to be the lower power consumption. LED grow lights have now come of age and high performance LED grow lights can outperform a HPS grow light using around half of the watts. There is still many very average and poor performing LED grow lights available on the market and it seems that the manufacturers and sellers of these type of lights are the main guilty party when it comes to the continuing practice of wattage exaggeration.
 If you are considering buying an LED grow light, always find out the real power consumption. Exaggerated wattage ratings tell you absolutely nothing about the light. These ratings don't tell you the power consumption or the output of the light. They only tell you that the lights are being marketed with deception.
​Happy Growing..