In an advanced indoor hydroponic system, electricity is the main operating cost item. In particular, lighting accounts for between 50 percent and 70 percent of total consumption on average, making it the most critical factor in the economic sustainability of the system.
Evaluating an LED system only by installed watts or declared lumens is an incomplete and often misleading approach. The correct question is not how much energy is consumed, but how much of that energy is actually converted into useful plant growth.
To answer this we need correct metrics and a systemic analysis that relates:
Lux measures the illuminance perceived by the human eye, weighted by visual sensitivity. Plants, however, do not respond to light in the same way.
Two light sources with the same lux value can have:
An LED designed for the human environment may be energy inefficient in an agricultural setting while appearing very "bright."
👉 Key conclusion: lux is not a reliable metric for evaluating the efficiency of a hydroponic system.
PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) covers the spectrum between 400 and 700 nm, which is the radiation actually used by photosynthesis.
The operating parameter is PPFD (µmol/m²/s), which indicates how many PAR photons strike a surface every second.
PPFD is directly related to:
In other words, PPFD measures the functional quality of light, not its visual perception.
In a professional plant, the key metric is not the watt, but the real cost of photosynthetically useful light.
The correct reasoning is:
How many euros do I spend to provide the plant with the amount of PAR it needs to complete the cycle in the shortest possible time?
This leads to an implicit operational indicator:
Two systems with the same electrical consumption can generate:
Fixed-spectrum LEDs, although powerful, tend to:
In advanced systems, however, light becomes a dynamic variable, modulated according to the actual phenological stage of the plant.
This makes it possible to:
In the case of Tomato+ LEDs, the energy balance is addressed upstream in hardware and software design. LED arrays with 6 independent spectral channels, controlled by proprietary firmware, allow only useful PAR to be delivered at each stage of the cycle, avoiding waste typical of fixed-spectrum LEDs.
The intensity and spectral composition are not static, but dynamically modulated by the Growth Plan, which adapts PPFD and photoperiod to the actual phenological stage of the plant.
Added to this is an often overlooked but decisive element: liquid cooling.
Active thermal management makes it possible to:
The result is a system in which light output does not degrade with hours of use, and energy efficiency remains constant cycle after cycle. In Tomato+ systems, luminous efficiency is not a nameplate specification, but a biological and economic variable optimized in real time.
A professional assessment must include the entire system:
Only a comprehensive analysis can tell whether a plant is:
In advanced indoor farming:
Those who ignore this approach waste energy and reduce margins.
Those who master it build more stable, more productive and truly scalable systems.
Thank you for reading this article. Keep following us to discover new content on hydroponics, vertical farming, and smart agriculture.
Tomato+ Team