I want to use a 1.4m by 1.4m tent. 4.6 feet by 4.6 feet. I want to get led lights but am not sure how many lights i need. If i use 32 watts per sqft. I would need 675 watts for an area of 21.1 sqft. But the light manufacturer has 2 wattage an actual and listed for 600w listed the actual power is 200w. So if i follow the 200w i would need at least 3 600w listed lights. Would this mean the power consumption is 1800w for 3 lights for the grow tent, however if i use hps lights, i would only need 1 1000w hps. Wouldn't that mean led lights are actually using more power? I will include the link to the lights the manufacturer has. Please help
I'm a noob, so don't put much stock in this. First, I think sixstring is right in that much of it is marketing bs, but the idea behind it that you have two technologies, one everyone knows (HPS) and one that's newer and less known (LED) and these mfr's want to give you the two numbers so you can figure out what you need on your own. As in, if you have a tent running a 600 watt HPS and you want to switch over to LED, they're not apples to apples lighting and a 600 watt (actual) LED is supposed to be more powerful than a 600 watt HPS. The numbers are juiced up to move product, but when they say 600 watt with 200 watt actual, they mean that the unit pulls 200 watts at the wall and it's supposed to replace a 600 watt HPS.
If I were in your shoes I'd first want to consider the reason why I wanted to switch and go from there. If I wanted to reduce heat and watts inside the tent and were looking at the cheaper lights you find on Amazon like
Viparspectra and such, I'd probably try two 600 watt (200 watt actual) LEDs and see how they do. Basically, I'd ignore their HPS equivalent numbers and go by actual watts and reduce it from my current setup by a certain percentage and try it out. But, if I wanted to swap out a 600 watt HPS light for a kickass LED of equivalent wattage, I'd get that 600 watt COB from Timber linked above.
