Strobing switch/circuit to reduce electrical cost?

I'm not sure how long it takes a plant to "realize" the light is on before it begins to photosynthesize, but I suspect there may be a delay from the instant-on of most lights. As well, there must be a delay in the plants when the lights go off, before the plant stops the food-making process. As we already know, in natural light, the levels slowly increase as the sun rises and then peak and then slowly decrease. But indoors, it's "on" and max peak light all day and then "off".

I used to have a strobe light when I was a kid...pretty cool...Varying the time between strobes, while in a pitch dark room, could be pretty interesting -to say the least!

I wondered if an LED in combination to some type of strobing circuit could allow a grower to strobe the light so that the actual electrical use would be essentially cut in half....but set at a rate that would allow the plants to not "realize" the lights are turning off -instead responding as if there is a constant flow of photons.

Is such a thing possible? What would be the drawbacks?

Well, realistically if it was 50% duty cycle, Meaning it is on 50% of a complete on/off period, then you would have a power consumption of 50%. So in short, it would work, but if you were to just dim your light to 50% it would be the same exact thing but without an annoying strobe.

psychedelicdaddi said:

Well, realistically if it was 50% duty cycle, Meaning it is on 50% of a complete on/off period, then you would have a power consumption of 50%. So in short, it would work, but if you were to just dim your light to 50% it would be the same exact thing but without an annoying strobe.

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But would you be getting the same intensity dimming at 50% as you would with a full power strobe?

your plants would freak out just like the human brain. try it. put a strobe light in your plant tent and see what happens. the same thing that would happen if you put a strobe light in place of your regular bulbs. brain farts. actually a strobe light would not save money as it draws a constant source of power. the strobe merely f;lashes at a rate established. but current draw is constant. measure it. all residential lights draw constant current while turned on. normal strategy

VegasWinner said:

your plants would freak out just like the human brain. try it. put a strobe light in your plant tent and see what happens. the same thing that would happen if you put a strobe light in place of your regular bulbs. brain farts. actually a strobe light would not save money as it draws a constant source of power. the strobe merely f;lashes at a rate established. but current draw is constant. measure it. all residential lights draw constant current while turned on. normal strategy

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The current is constant but is ~50% less than the light if it were just plain on. It's basically a typical power supply but without a paralleled capacitor to smooth the output voltage.

But anywho, I completely agree that the plants would probably hate it.

OP: just build a good light and don't reinvent the wheel

I've found this paper a couple weeks ago -> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13580-016-0068-y
And there is one more from 2012/13 about the effect of pulsed light on tomato plants -> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257018769_Intelligent_lighting_system_for_plant_growth_and_development

I've never read them because both are too pricey for me, but it seem to be a very interesting topic.

We've already had a discussion about pulsed lightning -> https://www.rollitup.org/t/pulsed-lighting-more-efficiency.866402/

Thanks for the responses...

I'm not trying to build a light or anything...just thinking about stuff and bouncing ideas around to see what comes up.

It seems like when plants are in an indoor-grow situation, they are in basically pitch dark and then when lights come on, it's full-power. So, I assume, when plants are put into that type of lighting condition, there's probably a "lag" in them that takes maybe several minutes to get going before they are photosynthesizing at full-bore...And, if that's correct, then maybe the plant still continues to work for a little while after the lights go out -like the way glow-in-the-dark paint stays charged for awhile or something analogous like that. So, maybe not so much of a strobe light as we think of when that term is used...but, still a sequence of on and off cycles that can take advantage of those lags.