Honestly I don't see anyone debating HID vs LED. I'm certainly not suggesting you switch, or that HID is better, once the prices come down I'm going to switch to LED as a matter of fact.
I'm saying light needs to be treated like light, instead of acting like LED light is something drastically different. The diodes might be more power efficient and the spectrums might be more effective, but they are still only light with a certain amount of power pushing it towards your plants.
All I've tried to say is that the farther away the lights are, the less light your plants are absorbing. The less light your plants get the less potential they have. Shaded parts of the plant aren't absorbing as much light as they are capable of which was why I suggested side lighting specifically. I saw an awesome LED grow the other day where the guy had QBs mounted around the plant in a circle. It looked very effective.
I'll also throw in that 200w lights are 200w lights, not 500w so treat them like 200w lights. A 200w light will effectively cover a 2x2 or 2x3 area depending on the shape. It doesn't matter if its HID or LED 200w at an effective distance will cover that area. Given those conditions I'm positive the LED grow will be better all around.
What I don't buy into is the idea that you can place 200w of light source twice as far away and still get the same performance. Once you are over 12 inches from the source the intensity exponentially drops. At 2 feet you literally are getting 1/4 of the light potential on your plants. Its the INVERSE SQUARE LAW and unless science has changed I'm pretty sure this still applies to all light sources.
