I routinely run 350 real watts, and go up to 1400 when I really need light. Helps with heating, but doesn't get all that hot.

1400 Watt of LEDs is the kind of lighting you'll find atop a tall pole in a sports stadium. That's ~200,000 lumen, or about 10x as much as you'd need to light a large room really brightly. If you put that next to a skylight, it would make the sun look dim. It's certainly not impossible, but that's a lot for a single point light source.

What are your rooms like? Do you live in a castle?

I have 2x SmallRig RC 350D [1] and Godox M600bi [2]. These are medium-spec videography lights that draw their rated power from the wall. Lux @ 3m is noticeably (10x) dimmer than the sun.

I have tripped my breaker when running the setup, so I run from two outlets on two breakers. For my current (quite large) room, I'd love to upgrade to the 5000W lights (Nanlux Evoke 5000B or the Aputure STORM XT52), but electrical wiring would be a hassle. For a standard room, I find 700W to be sufficient.

I also backed this project - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/brighter-the-world-s-brig... - been following them since their Show HN.

[1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1729860-REG/smallrig_... [2] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1715199-REG/godox_kno...

For reference, this is a 1200 watt stadium light: https://www.ledlightingsupply.com/led-outdoor-lights/led-flo...

So it's not unfair to say that you're off by a order of magnitude. For a single stand, 2 orders if counting all the stands.

1400 W is a lot by conventional room lighting standards, but not if your objective is recreating daylight indoors.

This is what a 20kW incandescent bulb looks like in a home/backyard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT5_-A0m8_U

I can’t believe he did that in an enclosed space. “It’s like having a bonfire in the room” indeed.

Before I even click that link I'm going to assume it's photoninduction.

Edit: It was! That mad lad!

The sun is really bright. My outdoor Hue sensor regularly reads 50k+ lux in sunlight. A room in my house with 100 watts of LEDs reads ~300 lux from the sensor on my dresser.

Yeah it’s truly astonishing how bright the sun is when you start trying to recreate it at home. But my room is brighter inside than an overcast winter day outside! That was my goal, and it’s substantially improved my mood. I’d do a write up but my strategy has been “keep buying lights until it feels bright enough and distribute them around the room”. I should probably get a real lux meter I’ve just been using my phone which seems a bit off.

700 watt space heaters seem pretty common. I’d expect the heat produced by 700 watts of LEDs to be just a tiny bit less than the space heaters (as some of the energy will sneak out the window, photons being sneaky fellows).