Ask Me Anything - Lighting the way into the future with Greg Alura from Barron Lighting Group
Who: Greg Alura from Growlite by Barron Lighting Group What: Lighting the way into the future Where: Right here When: Wednesday, November 28th at 11 AM PST.
I think you guys are great and I’m looking forward to this discussion.
If you could only use one light in a commercial grow, would you choose CMH, HPS, or LED? What do you see being the light of choice in the future?
If I could could only use one type of light in a commercial grow today, I would choose the CMH because of its full spectrum output as well as the ease and familiarity of maintenance.
In the near future I can see a cost efficient, full spectrum LED being developed that performs well for this application.
Thanks for joining us today, @Growlite! I’m stoked for this AMA!
I know Barron manufactures lights for applications outside of the cannabis business including large industrial applications. Where did you get your start in cannabis?
Growlite started in the cannabis space back in 2008 in southern California. Barron Lighting, who has 45 years of experience in all types of electric lighting partnered with Growlite in 2014. However the partnership between the people at both companies started over 15 years ago.
Barron has been headquartered in Phoenix since 1997. Growlite moved to Phoenix from California to better service some large consulting contracts with some of the licensed growers in Phoenix. in the early 2000s, I had worked with Aubrey Bradley, the founder of Growlite, on many general lighting projects. Growlite was at a point of some extreme growth and the partnership with Barron was the best way to manage that growth. In addition, we knew that true third-party performance testing and safety listings like UL would become more and more needed as our industry becomes more regulated.
Thank you so much for your time. Kind of a broad question, but where do you see grow lights heading? What bulbs are most popular? What is your preference (if any)? What types of lighting trends are you seeing on your end?
Does Growlite have technicians and designers available to answer customer questions and to assist with product selection? Yes, we have people here in our office, including me, who will talk to you about your specific situation and provide guidance on what fixtures may be the best fit
Are your products certified by any third-party rating agencies? Every component used in Growlite products is a UL listed component, and all of our complete fixture assemblies are also either UL or ETL listed, Underwriters Laboratories tests all manner of consumer goods for end user safety, ETL also tests products to the same safety standards. As far as performance tests, we have photometric and photobiological testing performed by the UL labs as well, and we are the only company to publish these reports on our website.
Lastly, does Growlite provide a chart on how much light is emitted by your various lighting fixtures
Yes we do! We do lighting layouts for anyone that can send us the dimensions of their grow space. It is free service that we offer to everyone.
RayWearCC
I see lights headed toward full spectrum solutions tailored for specific grow environments, some of these solutions will be in LED others will remain in HID (at least for the near future). For instance, growing methods or plant types that result in short plant heights at harvest lend themselves to LED solutions while tall trees may require a combination of HID overlighting with LED interlighting.
I think the most popular lamps/bulbs will be those that provide full spectrum light that approaches the broad full spectrum that the sun produces.
We always talk about grow light design in the future…ie “the best LED’s are coming soon!”. I am seeing more integration of environmental controls syncing with lighting arrays. I understand Growlite has a new product that aims to do exactly that…what can you tell us about the Black Box?
Our Black Box is a industrial lighting controller combined with environmental monitoring. It is capable of controlling lighting in 16 zones with individual temperature, humidity, CO2 and VPD readings for each zone. The light timing can control up to 192 lights per zone. The black box features a note function that allows room managers and facility manager to communicate with each other about tasks and conditions within the room and logs those conversations. Alarm e-mails can be sent to room managers when any environmental conditions exceed the user set limits. All of this info is logged and saved, “so if the plane goes down, you can see what happened!” . Or better yet, when you have a great run, you can repeat it!
You have an amazing line of lighting products on your site.
Kareenabis~
