Sensi Brands increases cannabis yields 30–35% while reducing lighting electrical load 28.7%

For large commercial cannabis cultivation facilities, lighting represents both a critical production input and a major operating expense. The challenge is not simply to reduce watts — it is to deliver more usable light to the canopy while converting that light into greater crop productivity.

That was the opportunity at the large cultivation campus in Langton, Ontario, now operated by Sensi Brands and formerly known as Maricann.

The facility had cultivation rooms illuminated with traditional 1000W high-pressure sodium grow lights. While HPS technology helped establish the commercial indoor cannabis industry, its relatively high electrical demand, heat load and lower photon efficacy create an opportunity for substantial improvement with modern high-performance LED grow lighting.

The Langton team began replacing its 1000W HPS fixtures with GLS PROGROW 2400 HB LED luminaires.

The objective was straightforward but demanding: reduce lighting energy consumption while increasing the quantity of high-quality cannabis produced from the same cultivation space.

The PROGROW 2400 HB was selected to replace the facility's 1000W HPS lighting.

Rather than viewing the project simply as an energy-efficiency retrofit, GLS and the cultivation team approached the upgrade as a crop-productivity opportunity.

High-efficacy LED lighting allows cultivators to deliver high photosynthetic photon flux to the crop with substantially less electrical input than legacy HPS technology. Just as importantly, a well-designed LED system can distribute that light more effectively across the canopy.

For cannabis cultivation, that distinction matters. The goal is not simply watts saved per fixture. The more meaningful question is:

How much marketable cannabis can the facility produce from every square foot of canopy and every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed?

At Langton, the answer became evident through successive harvests.

According to the facility's cultivation team, cultivation rooms converted from 1000W HPS to GLS PROGROW 2400 HB LED fixtures experienced a 30–35% increase in yield across strains.

That result is especially significant because the improvement was not limited to a single cultivar. Different cannabis genetics can respond differently to environmental conditions and lighting intensity. Seeing substantial yield improvement across multiple strains provides a valuable real-world indication of how a higher-performance lighting environment can translate into commercial production gains.

At commercial scale, an increase of this magnitude can fundamentally change the economics of a cultivation room. More flower can be produced from the same licensed canopy area, building footprint and much of the same underlying facility infrastructure.

Higher yields did not require higher lighting energy consumption.

According to the cultivation team, replacing the facility's 1000W HPS lighting with PROGROW 2400 HB luminaires resulted in a 28.7% reduction in electrical load, with a corresponding reduction in electricity consumption and cost.

This combination is central to the economics of modern commercial LED grow lighting: more crop output with less electrical input.

Reducing lighting power can also have benefits beyond the electricity consumed directly by the fixtures. HPS lighting introduces substantial heat into a cultivation environment. Moving to more efficient LED technology can reduce the heat associated with producing a given amount of photosynthetic light, potentially reducing the cooling burden as well. Actual HVAC savings depend on facility design, operating conditions and environmental strategy and should be evaluated on a project-specific basis.

The Langton results are consistent with an important body of cannabis lighting research showing that cannabis can respond strongly to increasing light intensity.

A 2021 peer-reviewed study by researchers at the University of Guelph evaluated indoor-grown cannabis over average canopy light intensities ranging from approximately 120 to 1,800 µmol/m²/s APPFD during flowering.

Across that tested range, cannabis flower dry yield increased from approximately 116 to 519 g/m² — a 4.5-fold increase — and the researchers observed no saturation of the yield response within the practical lighting intensities studied.

The study also found increasing light intensity was associated with increased harvest index and denser apical flowers. Cannabinoid potency itself did not significantly change with increasing light, meaning the much larger flower yield translated into substantially greater cannabinoid production per unit of cultivation area.

For commercial growers, the implication is important: lighting efficiency should not be evaluated only by how little electricity a fixture consumes. It should also be evaluated by how effectively the lighting system enables the crop to convert photons, space and energy into marketable yield.

A conventional LED retrofit analysis often starts with:

How many watts will we save?

For a commercial cultivator, a better analysis goes further:

How many grams of marketable flower can we produce per kilowatt-hour of lighting energy?

At the Sensi Brands Langton facility, the combination of a reported 30–35% increase in crop yield and a 28.7% reduction in lighting electrical consumption indicates improvement on both sides of that equation. The facility is producing substantially more cannabis while using substantially less lighting energy.

That is the kind of efficiency improvement that can directly affect cost per gram, production capacity and the long-term competitiveness of a commercial cultivation operation.

The Langton project demonstrates why GLS focuses on high-output, high-efficacy LED lighting designed around commercial crop performance.

For existing facilities, replacing legacy 1000W HPS fixtures with GLS LED luminaires can provide a practical pathway to improving both cultivation performance and energy efficiency without requiring an entirely new facility.

For new construction and major expansions, GLS can take the concept further with remote-power LED lighting systems, locating power conversion outside the grow room and distributing DC power to the fixtures. This architecture can reduce driver-generated heat inside cultivation rooms, centralize power-system service and allow the lighting, electrical and HVAC infrastructure to be designed together from the beginning.

GLS will continue to offer local-power fixtures for retrofit applications as well as remote-power solutions for new construction and facilities designed around centralized power.

The Sensi Brands Langton project illustrates an important principle for commercial cannabis cultivation:

The best grow light is not necessarily the fixture that uses the fewest watts. It is the lighting system that enables the facility to produce the greatest amount of high-quality, marketable crop from its available canopy, electrical capacity and operating budget.

By replacing 1000W HPS lighting with GLS PROGROW 2400 HB luminaires, the Langton cultivation team reports achieving both sides of that equation — 30–35% higher yields across strains while reducing lighting electrical load and associated energy consumption by 28.7%.

For large commercial growers, improving yield and reducing energy consumption simultaneously can have a far greater impact on cultivation economics than energy savings alone.

Whether the project calls for a straightforward HPS-to-LED retrofit with local-power fixtures or a remote-power lighting architecture for new construction, GLS can develop a lighting strategy around the facility's crop and economic objectives. Talk with GLS about a commercial lighting plan.

Performance results described in this case study were reported by the customer's facility management and reflect conditions at this specific cultivation facility. Crop performance and energy savings vary according to cultivar, lighting layout and intensity, environmental conditions, cultivation practices, HVAC systems and other facility-specific factors.