I am still not convinced I can duplicate my current PAR levels with LED's alone.
Well.. I understand the hesitancy but if you'd read all zillion pages of the DIY LED builds you'll see that LEDs can blow MHs out of the water in PAR. You can get PARs vastly higher than MH can produce. In fact it's becoming clear that you can easily over-light corals if you're not careful. We are finding that you should use the dimming abilities of LED drivers to work up the brightness, over many days, to prevent bleaching. LEDs are the only viable way to punch to the bottom of deep tanks. The optics allow beam collimations that can hang together for greater depths than are available with MH's point source.
But one of the real beauties of LED is that with a deeper tank you actually control the light placement. You could run different optics or a higher number of LEDs focused on the deeper regions while running wider or fewer LEDs directed at the shallower areas. (Something completely lacking in MH's ability.)
I'm sure careful planning and use of LEDs would allow you to probably drop your system's electrical bill to something around 1/4 of MH's.
Let me try to list the saving paths:
1) You get the approximately 50% straight off.
2) You can light specifically and hence not over-light.
3) You can run dawn/dusk profiles.
4) Almost no IR is projected into the water.
5) Chiller or A/C loads will drop substantially.
6) If you are billed in tiers then the saved kWhrs can be the most expensive ones you are normally paying for.
As for initial expenditure der has run down the payback several times. Yes! Up front costs are steep, but the payback hovers around 1.5 years. Any business would fall all over itself for that kind of payback.
T'wer me? I'd be building LEDs then sell your MHs while they're still in good shape and others haven't seen the light. Cashing in on your MHs would probably slash your payback period to just months. :dance:
