Cycle- Planer free App - work in progress...

It varies by situation. But what I do is follow the manufacturer's guidelines on distance and wattage for each stage. As for the DLI, that will vary by the grower too. But this is a good one for saving electricity and still getting a potent good harvest. Seedling 16 hours DLI, 8 hours scotoperiod. Vegetative- 12 hours DLI, 12 hour scotoperiod with 1 hour light interruption in the middle of the scotoperiod, which is known as photoperiodic control and keeps the plants in vegetative mode until you are ready to flower them. This can only be done if you have adequate intense light. With adequate intense light, the plants often are tanked up and go into photoprotection mode. If you don't know, I suggest learning about photoprotection mechanisms and how to tell when your plant is in photoprotection, because it's just a waste of energy and stresses the plant to be giving it light when it's not even using it. This wasted energy is also heating up the grow space, evaporating water from the soil, and making an environment more susceptible to pests and pathogens, especially on weakened light stressed plants. Easy targets. But this schedule results in short healthy plants with tight internodal spacing. It changes how the plants growth form is. For flowering use the standard 12-12 or you can opt for 8 hours DLI and 16 hours scotoperiod. This will result in a faster finishing plant dripping with resin. Cannabis loves darkness, but needs light. So there are options to save money and still harvest really good bud. But all this cost depends on the lamps efficiency. Some budget lamps are not so efficient. So to get the same ppfd needed, it just costs more than a lamp that is more efficient. So buying a quality, high efficiency lamp will save money long term, outweighing the initial costs. Where as a budget lamp from china will actually be a constant money bleed, and be adding to the temperatures in the tent, and the other problems mentioned above. However it is useful to have a heater with a light function in colder environments. There that excess heat from the inefficient lamp will be useful.