A system of 1,000 400-watt Metal Halide fixtures costs $41.22 per hour at an average cost of 0.09 cents per kilowatt. If the fixtures are used for an average of 730 hours each month (730 x $41.22), the monthly energy cost is $30,090.60, or $30.09 per fixture.
What is the power consumption of a metal halide lamp?
It can be difficult to figure out how much your Metal Halide (MH) lights are costing you.
When we break down the actual operating expenses and compare them to the operating costs of solid-state LED lighting, our clients are blown away.
Once you have these data, you can calculate how much money you will save by converting from MH to LED lighting in your business.
To evaluate the running expenses, consider the two factors that contribute to Metal Halide’s high cost: hydro/electricity usage and replacement/maintenance costs.
We’ll look at the Hydro Cost of Metal Halide in this post.
Let’s start with the hydro usage of an MH light and compare it to that of an LED light.
To demonstrate the difference in operating expenses between MH and LED, I’ll offer two instances from recent audits.
This isn’t correct.
Due to the ballast factor, a 400 watt MH light actually consumes 452 watts.
EXAMPLE OF HYDROUSE 1:
A community arena, for example, currently uses 50 400 watt Metal Halide lights.
On the surface, 50 400 watt bulbs appear to consume 20,000 watts of electricity each hour (50 x 400w = 20,000w).
This is not the case.
Due to the ballast factor, a 400 watt MH light actually consumes 452 watts. The 50 400 watt lights really use 22,600 watts of power per hour, or 22.6 kilowatt hours (kWh) of hydro per hour. The arena now pays $15,368 on hydro for lighting (22.6kWh x $0.17/kWh x 4000hrs = $15,368), based on a blended hydro rate of 17/kWh and an annual operational time of 4,000 hours.
We advised this customer transition to two lights from the LusioFlex Essentials Series after providing an engineering lighting report: 40 Flex ES3V-6MS and 10 Flex ES3VU-6MS lights.
The ES3V-6MS uses only 146 watts of power, while the ES3VU-6MS uses 186 watts.
These 50 new lights use only 7.7 kWh per hour in total.
This new lighting arrangement has an annual running cost of only $5,236.
Once installed, the new lighting will save this arena 14.7 kWh per hour, a savings of nearly 66 percent.
They’ll save $10,132 in annual hydro if the rate stays at 17 kWh (we know it’ll go up, but let’s be conservative here).
HYDRO USAGE EXAMPLE 2:This time, we’ll take a look at a car dealership that uses 36 1000watt Metal Halide area lights.
The real water usage is 1080 watts per light per hour, and there is a ballast factor.
Each hour the lights are on, the dealership consumes 38.88 kWh of hydro (36 x 1080w = 38,880w or 33.88kWh).
Because the lights are on for an average of 12 hours per day and 365 days per year, they are on for 4,380 hours per year.
This dealership pays 15.25/kWh as a high-volume electricity user.
Their current lighting expense is $25,969.90 per year (38.88kWh $0.1525/kWh x 4380 hours).
…the dealership’s annual hydro bill will be reduced by $24,479 dollars.
That’s a 78.86 percent decline. We created another designed lighting report, this time recommending that the client use two lights from the Lumingen SLD-PK series: 19 from the SLD-PK-300 and 17 from the SLD-PK-240. The 300 model uses 268 watts, while the 240 only uses 184 watts. These 36 new lights will use only 8.22 kWh of hydro per hour in total.
The dealership’s annual hydro cost will be reduced by $24,479 once the system is in place.
That’s a 78.86 percent decline.
The second location where Metal Halide running costs mount up replacement/maintenance costs will be discussed next week.
Is it true that metal halide lamps are energy efficient?
The efficiency of metal halide lamps is average (75-100 lumens/watt source efficiency). They are outperformed by LEDs mostly because to their poorer system efficiency (
What is the wattage of a 1000W HPS?
In today’s hyper-competitive environment, every grower’s challenge is to maximize profit and change their tactics to stay competitive or gain an advantage.
The optimal approach to replace the sun is one of the most important profit decisions for indoor growers. Cannabis thrives in bright light. As a result, it was discovered that high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps were capable of producing this level of intensity. HPS technology, on the other hand, necessitates a lot of electricity, and more than half of it is wasted as heat in the grow chamber.
HPS lights are still competitive in some circumstances today, although LEDs are gradually replacing older technology for a variety of reasons. The entire cost of your lighting system will be determined by the operational voltage and current draw, wattage (the amount of power consumed by the lights), heat created, and the level of automation used.
Voltage
Because voltages can be complicated, it’s best to consult an electrician. The voltage you choose has a significant impact on your initial construction costs.
In general, the smaller the current draw, the greater the voltage (fewer amps). This also makes electrical wiring easier to install while keeping the power company happy. The amperage limits the wiring and circuit breakers. As your business grows, so will its current needs.
However, once a facility’s circuits are full, the number of grow lights it can install is limited. As a result, choose wisely.
Here’s an illustration: Let’s imagine you wish to use a 1,000-watt high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamp. This grow light has the highest power consumption and frequently has a 115 percent boost mode, which takes even more amperage. The system must be designed to manage the maximum current consumption, even if the actual alternating current (AC) voltage is 10% lower than the nominal value.
If the nominal AC voltage is 120 volts, it can draw up to 11.5 amps, which implies only one of these lights can be connected to the circuit breaker, as shown in the table above. The lights begin to draw less current as the AC voltage is increased.
When the voltage is increased to 480, an HPS grow light draws 2.7 amps, which means seven lights may be connected to a breaker per-light and yet consume the same amount of electricity and provide the same amount of light.
Wattage/Current
The wattage of grow lights determines how much energy they consume and how much it costs to run them.
Running a 1,000-watt HPS light for 12 hours a day, with around 1,050 watts of actual power use, will use 4,600 kilowatt-hours (kWh) each year. Lower-powered LED bars put near to the canopy can achieve the same light intensity, saving more than 2,000 kWh over the same time period.
There’s also a significant variation in the amount of heat generated by HPS versus LED lights. This is significant since heat will very certainly need to be removed via air conditioning, which is an additional cost to consider.
Heat is measured in British Thermal Units (BTUs) in North America, with 1 watt equaling 3.41 BTUs per hour.
With the exception of the less than 1% of the energy that becomes useful chemical energy (biomass in your plants) in photosynthesis, all electrical energy obtained from the mains in an indoor growing space eventually converts into heat in the room. The remaining is converted to heat, raising the room’s temperature.
When the input wattage is converted to BTUs, a grow lamp that produces 1,080 watts produces 3,682 BTU/h of heat.
This can be beneficial in a chilly environment, but most facilities will need to remove some of the heat.
With lower-power LEDs, the concept is the same, but the numbers differ slightly. Because the downward infrared emission from LEDs is substantially lower, the lights can be placed closer to the plant canopy, allowing more photons to reach the canopy. Cultivators produce the same products in the end, but they use a lot less power from the grid and produce a lot less heat.
Air Conditioning
Another significant cost that must be carefully handled to keep costs low while safeguarding plants is air conditioning. The quantity of cooling required is frequently given in tons. 12,000 BTU/h is one ton of cooling. That’ll power three HPS lights or around six LED lights.
In order to predict air conditioning expenditures, cooling efficiency is required. The seasonal energy efficiency ratio is the best indicator of this (SEER). Inquire about your building’s SEER with a heating, air conditioning, or insulation professional. It can also be determined by multiplying the heat output by the air conditioning’s electrical power.
The building’s SEER would be 19 BTU/watt-hour if the grow lights produced 1,900 BTU/h and the air conditioner consumed 100 watts.
So, how can this data be used to determine air conditioning requirements? Consider the following scenario: you have a well-insulated room with 10 HPS grow lights functioning 12 hours a day, 365 days a year, a warm environment, and a SEER of 15. This system would generate 36,820 BTU/h of heat. We obtain 2,455 watts if we split this by the SEER rating of 15. The air conditioning requires this amount of power, resulting in a total energy consumption of 10,753 kWh.
During the same time period, the grow lights will absorb the lion’s part of the costs47,300 kWh.
However, with careful planning, air conditioning costs can be kept to a minimum. When you bear in mind that the system must be constructed for peak load, you can save money on air conditioning by scheduling your grow lights so that they aren’t all on at the same time. If you have a 100-LED lighting system that produces 190,000 BTU/h during a 12-hour period, you’ll need 16 tons of cooling. An eight-ton air conditioner will suffice if the lights are evenly distributed to two different grow rooms, one of which can be operated from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and the other from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
Conclusion
When purchasing a grow light system, there are numerous factors to consider. The fantastic news is that you can rapidly make an informed business decision and maximize your revenues by using easy tools like the lighting cost calculator on AEssenseGrows’ website.
According to estimations taken from New Frontier Data’s “US Retail Sales Projections” and adjusted according to trends assessed by AEssenseGrows, the new installation and replacement market for cannabis grow lights in the United States will be $76 million in 2018 and $112 million in 2023.
There are a lot different lights to choose from, and farmers have a lot of alternatives. Indoor farming provides a lot of control at a high expense, so choosing the wrong lights can be harmful to your plants and your business’s financial line.
AEssenseGrows’ vice president of marketing is Phil Gibson. He joined the company in 2016 and is responsible for worldwide business development and marketing for indoor farming. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from USC and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UC Davis. The AEssenseGrows website has a comprehensive white paper on the entire cost of lighting.
Is LED better than metal halide in terms of brightness?
Metal halides and LEDs are both thought to be more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs. When it comes to the figures, however, the energy efficiency of an LED bulb vastly outperforms that of a metal halide lamp. A new 400-watt metal halide lamp has a 20,000-hour lifespan. Color temperature of 4000K and initial lumens of 32,000 to 36,000 are also selling features for this light. This indicates that the light output is unusually high at first. Metal halide lamps, on the other hand, quickly lose their brightness. In fact, it’s not unusual for lumens to decline by 20% in the first six months of use. In other words, after only six months of use, that incredibly bright metal halide will only generate 28,800 lumens. (After 10,000 hours of use, a metal halide typically generates half the lumens it did when first installed!) Furthermore, metal halide lamps are called omnidirectional, which implies that they emit light in all directions. Reflectors are frequently used in conjunction with metal halide lamps to drive light into a specific direction rather than all over to reduce wasted illumination. Metal halide lamps lose an additional 30% of their lumens when a reflector is used. This means that instead of 36,000 lumens, your lumens are closer to 20,000 after 6 months. LED lights, on the other hand, are directed. They do not waste lumens by dispersing light throughout the room, which helps to conserve light. However, much more importantly, LEDs retain at least 70% of their initial lumens over the course of their lifetime. With a lifespan of 100,000 hours, an LED not only shines brighter for longer, but it also lasts three to five times longer than a metal halide lamp.
Is it better to use HPS or metal halide?
While indoor plant lighting technology has advanced significantly, one constant has remained: most growers still prefer to utilize high-intensity discharge lamps in their grow rooms.
Metal halides and high-pressure sodium are the most common HID lights used in growing plants indoors and in greenhouses (HPS). Because there has been a long-held idea that metal halides are best for early vegetative stages of growth and HPS are more effective for flowering, both are widely found in grow rooms, especially marijuana grow rooms. Is this, in fact, the case?
Will metal halides result in larger, bushier, more robust plants, and are HPS bulbs the best option for flowering and producing larger buds?
To find out, I performed some research and determined that university studies would be the best source of information on the efficacy of various types of supplemental lighting.
Plants cultivated indoors and in greenhouses have been the subject of substantial research at several prominent universities. Both Utah State University and Michigan State University have extensive research and information on HID lighting.
There is no evidence to support the widely held belief that the extra blue light from a metal halide is optimal for vegetative development, according to the academic study. HPS, on the other hand, is far more efficient than metal halides in terms of photosynthetic radiation (PAR).
Furthermore, meticulous academic research has revealed that the amount of light plants receive has the greatest impact on their growth.
Professor Bruce Bugbee of Utah State University recently published a paper on the subject, and his research on a variety of lights and manufacturers shows that (A) HPS emits far more photons per watt of input power than metal halides, and (B) there is no evidence to support the claim that increased blue in a metal halide leads to more vegetative growth than HPS.
“There is neither theoretical or empirical evidence to support that notion,” Professor Bugbee said when I questioned if the greater blue spectrum in metal halides led to bigger plants in the early stages of growth. The apparent MH effect is most likely generated by the amount of light, not the hue.
This is significant because many people in the marijuana sector purchase metal halides for early-stage “veg growth” and then transition to HPS for bud. If you believe in the legitimacy of professionally done, unbiased university studies using approved scientific techniques, buying metal halides for “veg” could be a waste of money and result in lower yields.
Some thoughts to consider from my conversations with two university professors (Professor Bugbee of Utah State University and Erik Runkle of Michigan State University) who have long studied horticulture and supplemental lighting:
- HPS is roughly twice as efficient as metal halide in terms of electrical efficiency.
- What matters most to plant growth is photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), and HPS delivers more useable PAR than metal halide.
- In the “veg stage,” the higher blue in metal halide does not result in increased plant development when compared to HPS.
- Metal halides produce 80,000-110,000 lumens per ordinary 1,000-watt bulb on average. HPS bulbs produce around 130,000-155,000 lumens for the same power. When aiming to enhance plant development inside under electric light, this increased light output far trumps other concerns.
Is it possible to use LEDs to replace metal halide bulbs?
With metal halide, the 35,000 to 50,000 hour life of LED bulbs, which is such a significant difference when compared to 1000 hour incandescent or 2000 hour halogen, is less apparent. Metal halide light bulbs used in high bay applications typically have a rated life of roughly 20,000 hours. While today’s LED replacements quadruple that predicted life, the benefit must be balanced against the higher initial cost of LED high-wattage bulbs as compared to metal halide lights.
In addition, the cost of labor to replace the lights after the first installation is a critical element in assessing whether the extended LED bulb life makes a retrofit financially efficient. When compared to LED bulbs, replacing a metal halide bulb will take twice as long. Is this savings greater than the difference in bulb prices?
Of course, there are other aspects to consider besides light life. Savings on energy could be significant. A 200 watt LED can replace a 400 watt metal halide lamp. A 50 watt LED can be used to replace a 100 watt metal halide. A 50 percent decrease in yearly energy use (kWh) expenditures should be achieved by implementing an LED replacement program. It has the potential to reduce electric demand (kW) charges. The amount of money saved is determined by the number of lights replaced, the period of operation, and the cost of electricity.
Longer longevity and lower energy use aren’t the only advantages of LED technology. It also addresses some of the disadvantages of metal halide.
Metal halide lamps require a 2 to 5 minute warm up time before reaching full light output when turned on for the first time. Traditional probe start metal halide systems also require a 5 to 10 minute cool down interval before the lamps can be restarted, followed by a 10 to 15 minute warm up period before maximum brightness is achieved if power is lost, even briefly. The hot restart time is lowered to 3 to 4 minutes for pulse start systems. Any lights down time, however, puts a halt to usual activity. LED is an instant ON technology, which means that no matter what the temperature is in the room, the lights turn on at full brightness as soon as the switch is flipped.
In comparison to metal halide, LED is also easier to regulate with lighting control devices. Because it is instant ON, occupancy sensors can be utilized in some applications to limit lighting ON time in a place to only when the space is truly being used.
Finally, the quality of illumination can be improved by replacing metal halide bulbs with LEDs, depending on the type of metal halide bulbs being replaced.