I'm going through the musings of putting together an LED lighting system on the cheap. A much prior comment was: "The ideal LED to use is 5w and above, 10w really if you could find them but i'm sure they would be very pricey."
You can do it on the cheap if you are not fussed about coloured chips.
You can buy 10W 900lumen chips for around £1.30 each (US $2 a piece). Run a parallel string of 10 of these on a AC 220V to DC 12V 100W LED driver (costing £10 $16) (& need at least 10A wire at the terminals of the driver). I personally wouldn't fuss over LED reflectors as chips all point downwards (in contrast to CFL or HIDs) and you want the light to diffuse rapidly as you keep the LEDs close to the plants anyway.
Next, the problem is with heat dissipation. I'm not sure what proportion of energy is dissipated as heat, but guess it is in the region of 40-70%, so the question is, could you get away with a heat sink and or are fans necessary, I need to go back to my heat transfer notes from engineering at uni. These come at £2 a piece ($3.20 US). Or alternatively, would a nice cheap C section do instead, as shown before?
Either way, add some wires, plugs, fixings and base plate, from other cheap sources and it should cost little more than £50 for a 100W - 9000lumen grow light board and if you can do away with heat sinks, this could cost as little as £30 or £35 so $50-$56.
I have never done anything like this before or studied electronics since school physics so could someone with some knowledge say if this is feasable?
Here are the parts I am considering:
10x 10W LEDs
LED driver
heat sink
You can do it on the cheap if you are not fussed about coloured chips.
You can buy 10W 900lumen chips for around £1.30 each (US $2 a piece). Run a parallel string of 10 of these on a AC 220V to DC 12V 100W LED driver (costing £10 $16) (& need at least 10A wire at the terminals of the driver). I personally wouldn't fuss over LED reflectors as chips all point downwards (in contrast to CFL or HIDs) and you want the light to diffuse rapidly as you keep the LEDs close to the plants anyway.
Next, the problem is with heat dissipation. I'm not sure what proportion of energy is dissipated as heat, but guess it is in the region of 40-70%, so the question is, could you get away with a heat sink and or are fans necessary, I need to go back to my heat transfer notes from engineering at uni. These come at £2 a piece ($3.20 US). Or alternatively, would a nice cheap C section do instead, as shown before?
Either way, add some wires, plugs, fixings and base plate, from other cheap sources and it should cost little more than £50 for a 100W - 9000lumen grow light board and if you can do away with heat sinks, this could cost as little as £30 or £35 so $50-$56.
I have never done anything like this before or studied electronics since school physics so could someone with some knowledge say if this is feasable?
Here are the parts I am considering:
10x 10W LEDs
LED driver
heat sink