If you have been researching LED horticulture lighting systems for your plant growth facility,
Figure 1: Photosynthetic light response curves
HUMANS USE LUMENS
PAR
(Figure 1).
Three important questions you should look to be answered when researching horticulture lighting systems are:
How much PAR the fixture produces (measured as Photosynthetic Photon Flux)?
How much instantaneous PAR from the fixture is available to plants (measured as Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density)?
How much energy is used by the fixture to make PAR available to your plants (measured as Photon Efficiency).
The three key metrics used to answer these questions are:
PPF
PPF is photosynthetic photon flux. PPF measures the total amount of PAR that is produced by a lighting system each second. This measurement is taken using a specialized instrument called an integrating sphere that captures and measures essentially all photons emitted by a lighting system. The unit used to express PPF is micromoles per second (μmol/s). This is probably the second most important way of measuring a horticulture lighting system, but, for whatever reason, most lighting companies don’t list this metric. It is important to note that PPF does not tell you how much of the measured light actually lands on the plants, but is an important metric if you want to calculate how efficient a lighting system is at creating PAR.
PPFD
PPFD is photosynthetic photon flux density. PPFD measures the amount of PAR that actually arrives at the plant, or as a scientist might say: “the number of photosynthetically active photons that fall on a given surface each second”. PPFD is a ‘spot’ measurement of a specific location on your plant canopy, and it is measured in micromoles per square meter per second (μmol/m2/s). If you want to find out the true light intensity of a lamp over a designated growing area (e.g. 4’ x 4’), it is important that the average of several PPFD measurements at a defined height are taken. Lighting companies that only publish the PPFD at the center point of a coverage area grossly overestimate the true light intensity of a fixture. A single measurement does not tell you much, since horticulture lights are generally brightest in the center, with light levels decreasing as measurements are taken towards the edges of the coverage area. (Caveat Emptor: Lighting manufacturers can easily manipulate PPFD data. To ensure you are getting actual PPFD values over a defined growing area, the following needs to be published by the manufacturer: measurement distance from light source (vertical and horizontal), number of measurements included in the average, and the min/max ratio). HortiBest always publishes the average PPFD over a defined growing area at a recommended mounting height for all of our lighting systems.
Photon Efficacy
Photon Efficacy refers to how efficient a horticulture lighting system is at converting electrical energy into photons of PAR. Many horticulture lighting manufacturers use total electrical watts or watts per square foot as a metric to describe light intensity. However, these metrics really don’t tell you anything since watts are a measurement describing electrical input, not light output. If the PPF of the light is known along with the input wattage, you can calculate how efficient a horticulture lighting system is at converting electrical energy into PAR. As a reminder, the unit for PPF is μmol/s, and the unit to measure watts is Joule per second (J/s), therefore, the seconds in the numerator and denominator cancel out, and the unit becomes µmol/J. The higher this number is, the more efficient a lighting system is at converting electrical energy into photons of PAR.
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