I feel there isn’t enough emphasis on the sensitive relationship between LED lighting and heat.
I think that it’s due to people’s lack of knowledge, and the spreading of a myth that I am about to bust.

The myth – LED lighting doesn’t give off heat.
Busting the myth – this is not true.
LED lighting does give off heat, but much less than lighting using older technologies. And, unlike other technologies, with LED lighting, the heat and light are projected in opposite directions.

I don’t know if we will ever be able to manufacture lights which don’t emit heat; however with LED’s, heat emission is much lower and easier to handle than we are used to. If you have a high quality LED fixture then for each watt of power, 30% will be light and 70% will be dispersed as heat. If you have an excellent fixture, 40% will be light and 60% heat. With LED lighting the total power requirement is lower compared to other lighting methods and therefore the heat emission is lower.

Apart from the plants themselves this heat emission has vast implications for LED lighting.

Now for the second myth – LED lights are good for 50,000 hours.
We must remember that the basic component of the LED light is the diode itself (LED = Light Emitting Diode) and this component is very heat sensitive. If we don’t know how to funnel away this heat, then the diode might not last even 200 hours.
It is also important to remember that in almost every LED fixture there is a driver. If this driver isn’t suitable of working reliably for the stated life of the diode, then the fixture will stop working after less than the stated hours.

In this case we won’t bust the myth, just make it more precise.

So yes, LED lighting built of quality components, with a correct design, that’s used properly will last 50,000 hours or more.
The junction points at which the LED is attached to the electric circuit is critical in heat dispersal. Any reputable LED manufacturer which supplies data on the diodes it manufactures will state that this information is conditional on the junction not exceeding a certain temperature.

The junction temperature affects the life of the component, the rate of the light decay, the stability of the spectrum and the luminous efficacy (how many light units are produced per watt used).

This is the Achilles heel of LED and practically every LED fixture or light that you have seen or will see in the future has a built-in system to solve this issue.

As lighting suppliers, particularly of agricultural grow lights, we understand that building an ecosystem, where different parameters work well together, is critical and the only way to true success in this field.
We could say our “responsibility” as lighting suppliers, starts and ends with lighting, but this is not how we work. The added value that we provide to our customers who are working with complicated, expensive growing systems is by looking at additional parameters in the protocols and helping improve the overall product.

That’s it for now.

I wish us all good light