Light Movers Tracking Hydroponics Grow Lights
Light movers tracking hydroponics grow lights increase the area you can effectively garden under using the same grow lamps as with stationary hydroponics grow lighting indoor or in greenhouses-without increasing your electrical consumption.
When using light movers tracking hydroponics grow lights, growers may achieve near 30% more yield, by adding more plants in an increased effective grow lighting coverage foot print or by allowing the plants to get bigger in that increased area, with the same grow light as with conventional grow lighting set ups.
Light movers have been around not long after people started adopting HID lighting for cultivating crops indoors or as supplemental greenhouse lighting. Initially, grow lights were much more expensive than they are today-and not nearly as friendly. It made sense to cut down on your lighting costs AND power use for growing by tracking the light back and forth or in a circular movement over the crop canopy. The sun moves in a similar fashion overhead in natural settings.
Above: One of the earlier light moving innovations, and still a great idea.
The benefits are that more parts of the plants may be exposed to strong light, helping to reduce artificial lighting “shadows” that make the crop less productive. It can also help to keep the plant matter from overheating with closer plant to lamp tolerances being achievable with a reliable light mover.
Light movers or “light trackers” may not as popular as they once were, largely because the cost of grow lighting has come down while the technology has become more efficient and productive. Most growers will find they can get more yield from the same space by using stationary lighting-except they need at least twice as much power to do it. So if space isn’t a problem, and you want to maximize yields for watts of power, light movers can be a good solution for mid to large sized plants.
With newer developments in crop lighting technologies like LED, LEP and Induction Lighting that offer further power savings and befits ,but may cost more than your standard grow light, incorporating a light mover could prove to be the ticket in ultra-efficient use of power relative to yields.
By getting an extra 25-50% more effective coverage from a high-end grow light technology, a grower further swings the economic equation to their advantage. This help create the potential to amortize your new growing technology even faster.
Some light movers can handle more weight than others-check fixture weights and mover capacities carefully.
Grow Light movers are available in different lengths, with different tracking speeds and even with time delays, for example to pause on the ends to promote even crop development through the entire garden.
