HID Lighting Summary for Hydroponics and Aquaponics

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HID Lighting Summary
for Hydroponic and Aquaponic Systems

Welcome to our HID lighting summary webpage.

Admittedly, high intensity discharge lighting (HID lighting) isn't a crucial component of either hydroponics, aquaponics or even conventional greenhouse production. Many growers have perfectly functional setups without ever using HID lighting. However, other hobbyists and market growers rely heavily upon HID lighting at least seasonally, to supplement insufficient local light, or provide an early and/or late growing season boost. Indeed, HID lighting is worthy of at least some consideration even for growers who seem to have sufficient light. If we're going to the length of providing idealized nutrient solutions, growing media and even temperature control, we owe it to ourselves and our crops to at least consider whether our lighting should be optimized as well. This HID lighting summary page is for anyone who wants to make the most of these lighting supplements.

Lighting has come a long way in the last 20 years. Where many of my mentors worked with standard 4' long fluorescent tube fixtures, today's grower has a wide selection of affordable, energy efficient HID lighting options regardless of how much area is under cultivation. The old faithful fluorescents are still in use, but now we also have high pressure sodium, metal halide, LED, and super-bright compact fluorescents. Choosing amongst them all can be a challenge.

We've put together the following HID lighting summary table to help you sort out the various options and characteristics of each. This table seeks to provide a quick glance at the various HID lighting options, along with their advantages and disadvantaes. For each HID lighting option, we have also written up a dedicated web page describing that option in much greater detail. For those HID lighting options which we have used here, we have included our own experiences and preferences on those detail pages. Click on any of the table hyperlinks to open the corresponding detail page.

	Cost	Lumens	Energy Usage	Heat Output	Life Span	Availability	Best Purpose
Fluorescent Tube	Low	Low	High	Low	Long	Common	Sprouting
Metal Halide	Medium	High	Low	Medium	Medium	Common	Leaf Growth
High Pressure Sodium	Medium	High	Low	Medium	Medium	Common	Blossom / Fruit Set
LED	High	Low	Low	Low	Longest	Uncommon	Special Purposes
Compact Fluorescents	Medium	Low	Medium	Low	Short	Uncommon	Sprouting

Details
The table above provides a great deal of HID lighting information. It's a lot of information to go through, and it’s taken awhile to compile the summary table and associated detail pages. If you are in a position of needing to choose between these options, we invite you to take your time, read through all the relevant HID lighting pages, and ask lots of questions before making your choice.

Hopefully, either the summary table and/or the detail pages will answer whatever questions you may have about your own plans. We are always on the lookout for new HID lighting options. As those options hit the marketplace and start service, we try to gather either personal and/or peer review comments for how well they do their work. It's an on-going process.

If you learn about some new form of HID lighting and have not been able to find information on it, let us know and we’ll add it to the list above, with a complete review. If you have already reviewed the HID lighting summary table, and detailed pages, and still have more questions, let us know that too and we’ll try to answer those questions. This website exists to help you with your growing goals. Let us know if there’s any other way we can help you achieve those goals.

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HID Lighting Summaryfor Hydroponic and Aquaponic Systems

HID Lighting Summary
for Hydroponic and Aquaponic Systems