Lighting Acronym Cheat Sheet · School Of Hydroponics L & E

Aug 26 (edited) • Lighting

Lighting Acronym Cheat Sheet

I am making myself dizzy with all of these acronyms. I wanted to make a list of all of the lighting acronyms and what they actually mean so we can sort all this out once and for all!

PAR this stands for Photosynthetically Active Radiation and it is the word we use to describe the light waves that plants can actually use for photosynthesis. Think, colors the plant can see...

PPFD this one is a mouthful, Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density. This is how we measure the lights intensity. It is measured with a PAR meter at different distances from the light to give you a PPFD map (a bunch of squares that show you the power) This is measured in micromoles of photons per square meter per second (µmol/m²/s) -obviously right?...

LUX this is short for Luminosity which refers to the brightness of a light, not the power. Think Lumens are for Humans PAR for Plants...

LED this one means Light Emitting Diode. LED's are not light bulbs but rather a tiny circuit that plugs into a circuit board. They use a combination of semiconductor materials and phosphors to produce a broad range of light wavelengths that mimic natural sunlight.

DLI the Daily Light Integral is the end all be all first and last word in measuring your plants light. This measures PPFD over Time, taking the hours of light your plant will receive in a day into consideration along with the PPFD to calculate the DLI.

Questions? comments? bring em...

4 comments