Hydroponic Gardening, Part 5: Lighting

The plants need some form of artificial lightning to thrive in Norway in the winter.
After consulting Windowfarms.org, we decided to try with some 8W E27 socket led bulbs. The light output measured in lumens is about the same on a 10 watt led bulb as a 20 watt CFL.

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Light Output LEDs CFLs Incandescents
Lumens
Watts
Watts
Watts
450
4 – 5
8 – 12
40
300 – 900
6 – 8
13 – 18
60
1100 – 1300
9 – 13
18 – 22
75 – 100
1600 – 1800
16 – 20
23 – 30
100
2600 – 2800
25 – 28
30 – 55
150

This table is from eartheasy.com

The light was on for about 18 hours each day (on one plant). Until I suddenly regretted buying a cheap bulb from china (THIS ONE).

One morning it started smelling really bad, the light started flickering, and smoke started coming out from the bulb:/

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After this incident, clearly caused by the extremely badly designed power supply, I started using some daylight CFL bulbs. Compared to led bulbs; they use more energy, gets hot, and is not that directional. But they are safer..

CFL Light
CFL Light

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Check out this site for more interesting lightning discussions.

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