Hey Ken-

[Jocephus]

Or anyone else with the aptitude, really. Anyone know what the electricity consumption on a 400W hamilton halide vs. a 175W would work out to? I get lost in this stuff. Trying to see if it would kick the light bill up too high!

Thanks-

Joe

 

[a1amap]

400watt @ say .18 per kilowatt hour for 12 hours would roughly be $.87 per day or $25.95 per 30 day month.
175watt @ say .18 per kilowatt hour for 12 hours would roughly be $.38 per day or $11.40 per 30 day month.

For a difference of $14.55 per month

 

[kaptken]

Yous guys are learning fast about cost engineering! but i think my Delmarva winter rate is 10.75 cents per KWHR this month. Summer rate is about 14.2 cents?. both way up from the 7.5 cents it was before Dee-reg-yew-lation?

 

[a1amap]

So
400 watt $.52 per day and $15.45 per 30 day month
175 watt $.23 per day and $6.77 per 30 day month

Difference $8.68

 

[Jocephus]

Thanks, Al & Ken. I'm thinking of doing a pendant style light for this stock tank (no corals). Do you think one 400w halide would cover that much area? I think it's around 69" across. From what I recall, we used to spec 400w bulbs for auditoriums, so I think it might work, what do you think? Oh, and the light will hang from the ceiling, probably 18-24" over the water

 

[a1amap]

At 18" to 24" high I don't think you will get the spread you hope for. You will definately have a large spot light effect in the middle of the tank and a lot of wasted light in the center. If you are not doing corals why MH? A nice t5 setup would cost less for bulbs and use less watts and cover the tank better. But for just fish go CF and you will use less watts out of all the options.

I would do T5 because you say no corals now but you know some softies wil make there way in there. You will get better light coverage. Get with ronert he has some ballast pretty cheap then all you have to get are the endcaps. Now they are 4' so you will have to stager.
l--------------------l
. . l--------------------l
l--------------------l
. . l--------------------l

At 54 watts per 4' bulb you would use 216 watts vs 400 watts. But that just me.

 

[a1amap]

Are you talking about a round tank? I missed the Meaning of stock tank. In that case that might work. I still don't think you need that much light for a fish only tank. Any chance you could make/get the inside white to reflect light? Would be easier to light a 6' round tank.

Or use T5 and cross them like so (Only had paint to work with at work)

As T5 would only be 216 watts

 

[Jocephus]

Stock tank IS round. That's what got me thinking about a spotlight in the center. No corals means probably some shrooms and a leather or two, but the rock would all be in the center. I really like the shimmer from halides, I'm not sure t5's would give the same look.

 

[kaptken]

a single pendant up a 3-4 feet from the water should have enough spread to cover most of it for viewing light. but like you said, not enough for corals. but i bet shrooms would look nice and big and like it. just for a little accent. so check the angles of the pendant. the cone shaped ones may be too narrow. like the hamilton.

 

[Reefdiver72]

Now I have a ? would running them on 220 make a diffrence in the electric used? Thanks

 

[kaptken]

Puzzle -ment? we get billed for watts consumed by the U-till-it-tee!. which is volts times amps. the amps go down when the volts goes up. does it matter? I forget. maybe someone knows for sure.

 

[a1amap]

Overseas they use 220 volts and the only reason we use 110 is for supposive safty. But watts drawn would go down at a higher voltage correct so it should be cheaper.

 

[ronert]

Overseas they use 220 volts and the only reason we use 110 is for supposive safty. But watts drawn would go down at a higher voltage correct so it should be cheaper.

Short answer -
Nope.

Long answer -
Here's an example. Let's (for the sake of arguement) say you wanted a 175W MH for some application. I'm going to look at two ballasts (both electronic) for this application. Both fire the same 175W MH bulbs.

Case 1: Ballastwise DXE175HID1
- Input Volts: 120V
- Input Amps: 1.76A
- Input Watts: 190W
- Lamp Watts: 175W
- VoltAmps = 120*1.76 = 211.2VA (Not watts)

Case 2: Ballastwise DXE175HID2
- Input Volts: 220V
- Input Amps: 0.96A
- Input Watts: 190W
- Lamp Watts: 175W
- VoltAmps = 220*0.96 = 211.2VA (Not watts)

All the numbers come out the same in the wash, or rather the pocketbook.

We pay for kWHr (kilowatt-hours). What that means for us is that the input watts is really what we need to buy off the utility. And the input watts are identical between these two units. So if you were to set these two ballasts up, they would cost you the exact same amount of money to power.

As an aside, what happens to the missing 15 watts? (190W - 175W = 15W) That is the amount of power consumed by the ballast. Every time energy is transformed from one form to another, there is an efficiency loss. For both of these ballasta, that's the number - 15Watts. So these ballasts are (15W/190W) about 92% efficient at what they do.

Hope this helps, and doesn't confuse. The bottom line is that simply operating at a higher voltage does not mean it is cheaper.

- ted

 

[kaptken]

I like that answer. I guess that missing 8% of watts explains why the ballast gets so hot.

 

[ronert]

yup ... once someone masters loss-less energy conversion, we'll all be happier ... of course, the mathematics behind the discovery will likely prove that hell could (and in fact just recently did) freeze over ...

 

[Reefdiver72]

The only thing I have done different is I changed two ballasts and a pump over to 220 and it lowered my electric bill somehow. I thought it was changing it over that lowered I added a bigger dehumidifier and it still is 55.00 lower and it seems the heater is running more now so I am not sure what lowered it now. It just dawned on me I haven't run my welder much this month though.

 

[Young Frankenstein]

No matter what the voltage, the power consumption stays the same. With the exception of very efficient designed motors in 3ph, but that's just because they concentrated more on 3ph motors design, and were able to, has nothing to do with voltage input thou.