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Thought I'd pass this along...

synclinorium

synclinorium

Apparently Sunshine Systems is having a summer special on their GlowPanel 45. I used their 14 Watt model earlier in the year for supplemental lighting and it worked fairly well, I was thinking about upgrading for overwintering... still think I'll probably go with the GrowUFO, as the savings on these panels isn't that much considering they're about 25 dollars cheaper on amazon with free shipping.

EDIT: Link to their site

ASFx was doing a comparison between this model and the HydroGrow LED 50W Penetrator for those curious about the sort of results you can expect (Link).
 
Go for it! I would love to see how well it works on your plants...
So Keep a grow log would love to see the progress with any of them.
 
Jack Kerouac said:
I would like to see pictures of these growing peppers and tomatoes. The technology just isn't there for serious production.
Click to expand...

I remain somewhat skeptical of the claims on their website. My experience has been that the LEDs work fine for supplemental lighting, and in fact my tomato seedlings appeared to do absolutely fine this year with only the 14 Watt panels being used. Currently I've been starting seeds with only the two 14 Watt Panels and a small CFL bulb and they haven't been leggy at all.

I'm not necessarily looking to produce inside, just keep some plants alive through winter (mainly my citrus trees, but any peppers I chose to keep growing through winter too if I have the space). If I do buy one of these products I'll definitely keep a log of its use. Think I'll need to invest in a grow tent first though, because even the 14 Watt panels produce an obnoxiously bright purple glow that'll make the neighbors wonder at night, so I can only imagine what the 90 Watt GrowUFO would be like.

I should also mention that customer service with this company has been good in my experience. I had a small problem with one of my panels early in its use (some of the LED bulbs weren't working), so they replaced the unit free of charge (well, save the cost of shipping the old unit back to them). Took about six days from contacting them to have a new panel on my doorstep.
 
synclinorium said:
Apparently Sunshine Systems is having a summer special on their GlowPanel 45. I used their 14 Watt model earlier in the year for supplemental lighting and it worked fairly well, I was thinking about upgrading for overwintering... still think I'll probably go with the GrowUFO, as the savings on these panels isn't that much considering they're about 25 dollars cheaper on amazon with free shipping.

EDIT: Link to their site

ASFx was doing a comparison between this model and the HydroGrow LED 50W Penetrator for those curious about the sort of results you can expect (Link).
Click to expand...

Better move to Africa where there is enough light for free. And also bring your swimming suit.
 
synclinorium said:
Apparently Sunshine Systems is having a summer special on their GlowPanel 45. I used their 14 Watt model earlier in the year for supplemental lighting and it worked fairly well, I was thinking about upgrading for overwintering... still think I'll probably go with the GrowUFO, as the savings on these panels isn't that much considering they're about 25 dollars cheaper on amazon with free shipping.

EDIT: Link to their site

ASFx was doing a comparison between this model and the HydroGrow LED 50W Penetrator for those curious about the sort of results you can expect (Link).
Click to expand...

Better move to Africa where there is enough light for free. And also bring your swimming suit.
 
Funny, i just randomly pop in this thread and see my name mentioned :P

This is a pretty good deal though. It ends up being $100 each for all 3 panels. I paid around $116 each on amazon for the 8 that I have. I just use them for starting my hundreds of seedlings for my garden each year though. I don't regularly grow full sized plants with them. They do grow huge heads of lettuce just fine, but in my experience, they don't do very well growing full sized peppers.
 
it's a waste of time and money, go out get a 400 watt MH/HPS dual ballast and a couple of good bulbs plug in and grow a 5' tall 3' wide plant in a few months.

Save the pretty disco lights for the clubs not the plants.
 
LGHT said:
it's a waste of time and money, go out get a 400 watt MH/HPS dual ballast and a couple of good bulbs plug in and grow a 5' tall 3' wide plant in a few months.

Save the pretty disco lights for the clubs not the plants.
Click to expand...

These panels are good for seed starting, but not growing full sized plants. For growing a single full sized pepper plant, i'd never use a 400 watt MH/HPS setup. That's just way too expensive. It would cost about $70 in electricity over 90 days for 400 watts. The plant would have to produce 100lb of peppers to make it worth the cost.
 
ASFx said:
These panels are good for seed starting, but not growing full sized plants. For growing a single full sized pepper plant, i'd never use a 400 watt MH/HPS setup. That's just way too expensive. It would cost about $70 in electricity over 90 days for 400 watts. The plant would have to produce 100lb of peppers to make it worth the cost.
Click to expand...

Ok just want to be sure I have this straight. You went out and spent $116 per panel and purchased 8 $928 total to start seeds? However you don't want to buy a 400 watt system because it cost too much to run? Really?

Not sure what they charge for electricity in your area, but I ran my 400 watt for 8 hours a day and only paid an extra $12 a month. The good part about my setup is I only had to buy 4 pieces of equipment for everything and spent less than $100 to go from seed to fat juicy peppers in less than 3 months. Although I didn't pick 100 lbs I did pick about 20 big fat peppers a week until I shut the system down.
 
LGHT said:
Ok just want to be sure I have this straight. You went out and spent $116 per panel and purchased 8 $928 total to start seeds? However you don't want to buy a 400 watt system because it cost too much to run? Really?

Not sure what they charge for electricity in your area, but I ran my 400 watt for 8 hours a day and only paid an extra $12 a month. The good part about my setup is I only had to buy 4 pieces of equipment for everything and spent less than $100 to go from seed to fat juicy peppers in less than 3 months. Although I didn't pick 100 lbs I did pick about 20 big fat peppers a week until I shut the system down.
Click to expand...

Yup, i don't mind spending money on hardware. My situation is unique because I live in Las Vegas. Even during mid Winter, running T5 fixture makes my house feel like an oven as I found out in my previous T5 grow log here. LEDs have worked much better than any other type of light for me, and i've tried pretty much everything. Also, spending more than I need to on electricity feels more like throwing money into a camp fire, but that's just my opinion though. :P Electricity in my area is about 12 cents per kWh here so it sounds like i'm paying much more than you.

You've had success with running the light only 8 hours per day? Most of the logs and articles i've read recommend that 16 hours per day is optimal for peppers. Have you done a side by side comparison? It would definitely be nice to run the lights less and get similar results if that's possible.
 
Ok let me do the math to get a good understanding of the 2 setups.

Based on your $70 for $90 days your paying $23.30 a month to run the lights 16 hours a day. If you back that usage down to 8 hours a day we are actually paying the same amount $12 a month.

You spent $928 for 8 disco panels. I spent $100 for a full HID setup. If I ran my HID setup for 8 hours a day I'm paying $144 a year. This means I can run my $100 setup for 5.75 years before I've spent $928.

I'm not sure how many lumens each panel puts out but a 400 watt MH provides 40,000 lumens and when I switch over to fruiting and put in my HPS bulb i'm getting 55,000 lumens.

I think you would probably end up using all 8 disco panels to produce 55,000 lumens, but I couldn't say for sure since almost all LED panels don't provide lumen ratings which is understandable because the number is almost always embarrassingly low.

Either way I no longer run my HID setup because I didn't even want to spend the extra $12 a month because sun is free and does just as good of a job.

Anyone want to buy a nice HID setup for cheap.
 
LGHT said:
Ok let me do the math to get a good understanding of the 2 setups.

Based on your $70 for $90 days your paying $23.30 a month to run the lights 16 hours a day. If you back that usage down to 8 hours a day we are actually paying the same amount $12 a month.

You spent $928 for 8 disco panels. I spent $100 for a full HID setup. If I ran my HID setup for 8 hours a day I'm paying $144 a year. This means I can run my $100 setup for 5.75 years before I've spent $928.

I'm not sure how many lumens each panel puts out but a 400 watt MH provides 40,000 lumens and when I switch over to fruiting and put in my HPS bulb i'm getting 55,000 lumens.

I think you would probably end up using all 8 disco panels to produce 55,000 lumens, but I couldn't say for sure since almost all LED panels don't provide lumen ratings which is understandable because the number is almost always embarrassingly low.

Either way I no longer run my HID setup because I didn't even want to spend the extra $12 a month because sun is free and does just as good of a job.

Anyone want to buy a nice HID setup for cheap.
Click to expand...

The cost for the LED panels is unrelated though. I didn't care about the cost of that for my seed starting area. I am not growing full sized plants with them. When I mentioned the cost, I was referring to your 400w/1 plant setup over 3 months. i would never consider trying to grow a 5ft pepper plant with the 45w glow panels.

I did think this guy's setup was pretty cool. He grew around 42 peppers in that aeroponic system with a single 1000w light. I wouldn't do a setup like that in vegas unless i spent a lot of cash on cooling or used about 4 large LED panels, but it's still neat though.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Jksax914#p/a/u/0/vLUsVJippQw
 
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