Horticulture LED Lighting doesn’t have to be confusing. Here are an explanation of some of the terms that you will see when researching LED Lighting. Make sure to see our Horticulture LED Lighting buying guide.
- Active Cooling – The use of onboard fans to reduce the heat of the LED bar or fixture.
- IP Class – (Ingress Protection), is a level of protection the the bar will have against elements such as: dust, sand, dirt and liquids.
- Light Plan – A 3D CAD model illustrating how much lighting that your grow space requires.
- Lumens – is actually not related to horticulture and is simply the amount of visible light that is visible to the human eye.
- LUX – again not usually a measurement that is related to horticultural LED lighting, it is a measurement of the intensity of the light. LUX is equal to one Lumen per square metre.
- PAR – Also know as a good score in golf, PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) – means the light that a fixture or bar will give off to achieve photosynthesis. The amount of PAR is measured in PPF.
- PPF – (Photosynthetic Photon Flux), means the total amount of PAR that an LED bar or fixture produces per second. It is measured in umols/second.
- PPFD – (Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density), is a measure of the number of photons in the 400-700nm range of the visible light spectrum (photosynthetic active radiation or PAR) that fall on a square meter of target area per second.
- Water Cooling – Use of a closed water system to cool the bar or fixture. Water is circulated through each fixture or bar via a closed system. Water temperature increases as it removes the heat from the fixtures. At the end of the cycle the water passes through a chiller which removes the heat and pushes the cooled water into the system again.