I’m really glad you’re taking the initiative to dispose those lights properly. Kudos to you!
Rick is a great guy, I highly recommend working with them. I have never been more impressed with the light fixture in my life. The quality and craftsmanship of their Verta-8 is second to none.
And I would not say the HID’s cause humidity spikes, quite the contrary, they create microclimates above the canopy that are extremely hot, dry and hostile towards the cuticle layer of wax that develops on the leaf surface. Once that cuticle layer of wax is depleted, photosynthesis no longer occurs and the leaf is little more than a host for problems like powdery mildew.
I actually just wrote an article in one of the last issues of Grow magazine, titled: The Mystery Behind Powdery Mildew
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What you’re asking pertains to the production of cannabis flowers for sale per pound, I don’t do that. What I’m doing is a much longer business plan and has potentially much higher returns after a much longer investment.
I personally think that cannabis prices per pound will be down to that of organic dried tomatoes pretty soon. So anybody presenting numbers to investors at around $1,100.- per pound, will be out of business in no time.
I do heat my facility, but I don’t use very much natural gas to do so. I am located in the San Francisco Bay Area and we have very mild temperatures. Now that I’m not using the HID lamps, I don’t have to pay for the air conditioning and I use less fans, as I no longer have air cooled hoods.
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Interesting. I always pull the glass out of the hoods and use ambient cooling.
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See, access to this kind of knowledge is one of the things I love most about GN!
I couldn’t find a link to the article. Could you share one if you can?
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FYI, here’s what’s going on with LED in my former industry:
http://www.fiilex.com/products/Matrix2_RGBW.php
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Far Red i.e. 700 to 800 nm is tied to morphological responses like Emerson Effect. NIR and IR are outside of BPAR(Biological Photosynthetically Active Radiation) Range
800 to 1K nm are heat lamp range and temperature has a direct effect on metabolism yes 
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Thanks for the kudos, Todd. Glad you’re enjoying the fixture!
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About LEDs (and any other electronics in the system) … an enemy of all such technology are power transients (current spikes) sags, surges, etc. They occur regularly as the power grid is most suited for toasters, not solid state devices. Transients can either cause a catastrophic failure in the worst case, or a gradual degradation of electronics (such as the LED driver which is a solid state device) over time.
Proper protection - a transient voltage surge suppressor (TVSS) - on the mains would be a good place to start. And be careful about any motors that could be injecting transients into facility power system.
It can be worthwhile to use a Fluke 434 (or other) electrical disturbance meter to datalog the lines to see just how clean the power is so you know more about what you cannot see otherwise.
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@howardboothroyd, this is great information that you usually only run into well down the LED rabbit hole. High quality LED drivers have components in them to mitigate these issues. Many don’t.
Another thing to be mindful of is inrush current on drivers. Inline measures to buffer issues i.e. Cogen power and the surge suppressors you mentioned are good ideas even with the digital drivers pushing HID technology now.
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