lighting New to indoor - Looking for lighting tips

I am growing pepper plants this season and have multiple outlets to sell them. I will be starting the plants indoors for 1-2 months and then transferring to my greenhouse. I will be growing them on shelves and am wondering what type of lighting is most cost effective? I have grown with fluorescent tubes in the past but have never grown this many plants. I need to light 100 flats worth of plants ... Would an LED strip like this one work? maybe 2 or 3 of them for each line of trays? that seems like the most economical way to go if so?  http://https://www.amazon.com/SUPERNIGHT-Waterproof-300LEDs-Flexible-Controller/dp/B00B2F3KDQ/ref=pd_lpo_267_bs_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=QVQJX7KGJDHH6WF8J0B8  
 
Any insight or suggestions are much appreciated!

Read here:
 
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/25876-article-light-101/

Thanks willard3, Some great info, but it is about 5 years old. I am sure that LED light strips have taken a big step forward since then?  I am going between fluorescent and LED strips as of now.
 

LED strips are much better choice than fluorescent.
Please carefully select LED chip. It has to be designed for growing plant. Full spectrum LED chip will make life easier.
 
 

For my grow setup;
 
This is what is going through my head right now. Let me know if any of this sounds right! 
 
I am starting 100 - 8120 inserts (96 cells per insert) 
These will all be grown indoors and then hardened off before transplanting into larger 1204 inserts. I might possibly skip the 1204's and just go straight to the 1801's since these will be my final sell size. The 1204's would be slightly more manageable to keep watered.
 
I just bought some really beefy shelving from a box store liquidation so i am good on that. The main thing I am looking into right now is the lighting. Since I am only using the indoor lights for 1-2 months to start and then moving them to my greenhouse i am not trying to invest a huuuge amount if possible this year. I am going back and forth on fluorescent or LED strips. What is your personal suggestion? If I am going the fluorescent route I am thinking I would need 1 fixture per 3 flats; 33 total fixtures + 2 bulbs for each. ( I know that 2 fixtures per 3 flats would grow some great looking plants but that would too much $) I have used 1 per 3 flats in the past with great success but only to start 24 flats, not the 100 i am growing this season.  http://www.essential...CFQEpaQodrg4Ihw but the cost would still get high pretty fast! 33x12 = $396 in fixtures and at an average of $3 per bulb for cheap bulbs, i would be looking at $600 for a full fluorescent setup. 
 
The other option is LED strips. They are cheap, efficient to run, I dont have to replace tubes and are readily available. I am just wondering if my plants would dramatically suffer from using LED strips vs fluorescent.   http://Z®ZDM Waterproof 5M 300X5050 SMD RGB LED Strip Light with 44Key Remote Controller (DC12V)   These are the type of strips i was thinking about. At 16ft long, they could make up for 4 of the fluorescent tube setups. I would probably use 2 or 3 spaced out evenly to make sure there is good light distribution but i am still not even sure if they will be sufficient enough to get the starts off to a good start ( no pun intended) I would spend roughly $500 for this light setup if i went for it. If i could get away with only 2 strips per row; I would be looking at $300 to purchase and not to mention their efficiency would save me money on my electric bill.
 
Thoughts?
 
 

You can get away with an all-white LED setup as long as it is putting out enough light, overall.  LEDs are best utilized as pre-built full-spectrum layouts (expensive) or as DIY full-spectrum layouts (dirt cheap, but labor intensive).  With plant-customized LED setups, you can specifically engineer the amount/color of available light toward the plant "super happy zone" with minimal wasted energy.  I posted an LED study info-dump in MarcV's thread about UV light earlier today:
 
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/62844-do-chili-plants-benefit-from-uv-light/#entry1407808
 
Of specific interest to you would be the last link, which contains an abstract with a few dozen independent studies on the benefits and limitations of LED lighting.  They can be as effective or even more effective than other forms of lighting when properly applied.  The strips you are looking to purchase appear similar to those I use on vehicle ground effects, which can be cycled through various colors but only display one specific band at a time.  None of the programmed colors are technically in the "super happy zone" with a perfect combo of red/blue/white, which means you'd spend most or all of your time with them set to plain white.  If a cheaper strip of all-white LEDs is available, you would perhaps be better served buying those as your main gear and supplementing with one or two additional strands in a far red spectrum.  (They'll get all the blue they need out of white lights, generally.)
 
You can do fine with LED-only lighting as long as you have:
 
   A) a method for capturing and reflecting as much of the LED light as possible onto the plants.
   B) a simple way to raise/lower your LED setup appropriately as plants grow
   C) enough light
 
Your proposed LED setup will have next to zero IR output and the same for UV.  Neither are necessary and Flouro isn't much different; but if you are already splicing together an LED setup and you are handy with a soldering iron, you could easily buy some loose IR and UV LEDs from an electronics wholesaler and add one or two bulbs of each every 2-3 feet for a reasonable price.  Has the added bonus of prepping plants for real sunlight from day one.

I'm a big fan of DIY.  I always end up buying full spectrum LED chips like tihs. 
 
  
 
 

 

This kind of LED chip is inexpensive. It will create less heat, use less electricity. Single LED can cover wavelength from 380nm to 840nm.  As you can see from photo, color of the light is purple.  It's almost suitable for growing plant in any stage.  You just need to know how to design very simple serial / parallel DC circuit. Be familiar with constant current driver and soldering job. 
 
BTW, there a lot of LED solutions. Here are some you might be interested
 
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DC12V-5m-5050-growing-LED-Strip-IP65-Waterproof-growlight-Red-Blue-4-1-5-1-7/32344526827.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/High-Power-12W-LED-Grow-Light-30mil-Chips-Deep-Red-660Nm-with-Royal-Blue-440Nm-DIY/2335145_32743911144.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10pcs-50cm-piece-5630-12V-IP68-Waterproof-LED-bar-rigid-light-strip-grow-lights-Hydroponic-Plant/32549305404.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/New-Arrival-50pcs-lot-3w-full-spectrum-400nm-840nm-led-chip-45mil-bridgelux-3w-led-diode/121917_2008984975.html
https://sgrow.aliexpress.com/store/group/Led-Grow-Light-Bulbs/121917_259709587.html
 
 
 
 
 

WOW! thank you very much! Very informative, a little bit overwhelming but i think i can handle it haha. I am for sure going to go with a prebuilt light strip since i am not exactly electrically inclined. Do you think it would be enough to use 2 white LED strip lights on the outer edges and an IR and a UV strip in the middle? I can easily fashion a hoist of sorts and attach the strips to that so height should not be an issue. I will also be using a white film around the shelves of all plants as well as i am making a white cover to go over the black parts of the growing tray. I am using 1208 inserts with 96 cells per tray.

It's depend of many factors.  
- Wattage of each LED chips on the strip. 
- What kind of LED lens that cover LED chip.
- Distance between LED chip and seedling 
- Position of each LED chip
- Reflection of light
blah blah blah ...
Anyway LUX meter can tell whether each cell has got enough light for seedling or not. 
 
Did you know that LED strips can be cut and connect to different shape.  e.g. from straight line to rectangle.
 
Here is how:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTRLt-fzTwg
 
 

Scovillepeppers said:

WOW! thank you very much! Very informative, a little bit overwhelming but i think i can handle it haha. I am for sure going to go with a prebuilt light strip since i am not exactly electrically inclined. Do you think it would be enough to use 2 white LED strip lights on the outer edges and an IR and a UV strip in the middle? I can easily fashion a hoist of sorts and attach the strips to that so height should not be an issue. I will also be using a white film around the shelves of all plants as well as i am making a white cover to go over the black parts of the growing tray. I am using 1208 inserts with 96 cells per tray.

Click to expand...

 
You don't need to run a full strip of strictly UV or IR, just a few bulbs per 2 feet will do the trick.  If you don't want to solder things and the strips you're looking at don't come with them, don't sweat it.  They aren't necessary, they're just an optimization thing.
 
If you could simply get strips of the full-spectrum lights like lek showed, you'd be in business.  Check out the red/blue strips he linked, for an example.  Something like that would be fine for your setup.  Otherwise, you can run all whites and be fine.  Or run mostly whites with one far red strip in the middle to boost the red spectrum.  Since all you're looking to do is get seedlings started into adolescent plants you're going to sell, it won't have to be a perfect setup to get the results you want.
 
If you do run a big room full of the red/blue growlights, however; I would suggest a good pair of grow room safety goggles.  Eyestrain isn't bad with brief exposure in a home setup, but if you're working in and around that stuff all day, you're going to want some of the green filter glasses.