Reader Comments
Post a new comment on this article
Post Your Discussion Comment
Please follow our guidelines for comments and review our competing interests policy. Comments that do not conform to our guidelines will be promptly removed and the user account disabled. The following must be avoided:
- Remarks that could be interpreted as allegations of misconduct
- Unsupported assertions or statements
- Inflammatory or insulting language
Thank You!
Thank you for taking the time to flag this posting; we review flagged postings on a regular basis.
closeUpdate . . . ?
Posted by plantsync on 26 Jan 2016 at 17:19 GMT
I was most interested in the last sentence of the paper:
"Manufacturers are working to improve all types of lighting technologies and the cost per photon will likely continue to decrease as new technologies, reduced prices, and improved reliability become available."
It seems that this research was conducted with materials acquired in 2013. Does anything substantially change if new numbers with current prices of equivalent materials are used?
RE: Update . . . ?
bugbee replied to plantsync on 28 Jan 2016 at 05:53 GMT
Thanks for your question. In the past 3 years the biggest advances have been in the reliability of the fixtures. Nearly every LED manufacturer has released one or more improved fixtures. The cost per photon has decreased, sometimes by as much as 30%. The electrical conversion efficiency has not improved substantially from the 1.7 micromoles per joule, but some LED manufacturers are reporting slightly higher efficiencies on their web sites.
Two new LED companies have been reorganized from previous companies: Fluence Bioengineering and BIOS lighting. The people in these companies were responsible for developing the most efficient LED fixtures in the previous testing.
The most significant advantage of LEDs continues to be their ability to provide focused light.
Our 2015 companion manuscript discusses the effects of LEDs on leaf temperature: "Analysis of Environmental Effects on Leaf Temperature under Sunlight, High Pressure Sodium and Light Emitting Diodes". PLoS One. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0138930