Kessil A350W vs Metal Halide

[alton]

Good arguments for the most part on both sides, but from a person that went from MH to all LED I can attest there is no big savings going from MH to LED and KWH's. If you have MH /T5 or MH / T5 lighting in the summer you will run your MH less hours in the heat of the summer and increase in the winter. With running all LED I run my BML LED's 10 hours / 365 days out of the year. With MH I did not have a heater, with LED I now have one. For me the benefit was less evaporation with LEDs because I now can have glass tops. Being BML's are slim fit on top of the tank versus 20" above the tank, the tank looks much cleaner, and the fact I do not have to buy lamps every 16 months on average. Now looking at the V4 those are awesome and cover the full spectrum. Although Kessil grow corals, I have never been a big fan of spot light LED fixtures, too much shadowing. In closing if you are having high electric bills, look at your return and skimmer pumps, those run 24/365 or on average three times longer per day than your lighting.

 

[alton]

After I posted I realized I got off of the Kessil versus MH topic. So here is my take on that. I have a good LFS in my city that when they first opened they used Kessil's exclusively. The 4' x 4' x 16" display tank with a 12" center overflow had four Kessil's that grew coral great, except because of the shadowing the polyps where only on the top of the sps which to me did not look normal. Two plus years later I noticed one of the four Kessils has gone out. Which goes back to a MH user's argument of "You will spend more money on your LED, than I will spend on my lamps". For me my oldest BML Led is 4+ years old and going strong running at maybe 80%?

 

[ca1ore]

The trouble with the cost comparisons is how many folks actually use their light fixtures until failure (well, other than pre-mature failure :lol. I know I'm always swapping them out (even when I used MH) so usable lifetime becomes somewhat moot. Am I unusual in this regard?

 

[Reef Junkie]

The degree of technical knowledge required to change out an LED on say a Radium, is far beyond unscrewing a bulb.
In order to light my Aquarium, even moderately, I require two Radion LED lights. A cost of $1600. Plus mounting hardware and remote connectivity, I'm looking at about $2k with tax. If I have to replace them, I'm looking at an additional $1600.
So my cost to moderately light my Aquarium for 10 years would cost me $2-$3600k

MH lights are not much better on cost. The bulbs costing about $50-$90 each. X's 2
I ran my lights for approximately 8 months on average.
Unit cost: $1k
Bulb cost over 10 years: $2k approx.

So we're in the same ballpark for lights, the difference being MH will light much better for the same cost.

The electricity cost is arguable.
If you're running 1 or 2 300 watt heaters on an LED tank which may require to be on all year round.




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[jda]

Do you mean IR? instead of UV?

Yes... which is a huge difference and makes my posts look even dumber than they already are.

 

[jda]

Can we please stop posting or using Lumens per Watt? Lumen Meters (most) capture even less spectrum than a PAR meter and also ignore all kinds of spectrum that are really important. One of the commonly available ones will give you about 5 lumens per watt from most popular blue LEDs. If anything, post which meter was used and the limitations of it - like people do with the PAR meters.

There are good readings from high quality equipment that show them very, very similar from 350nm to 700nm - input watts to radiated watts of output.

 

[alton]

The trouble with the cost comparisons is how many folks actually use their light fixtures until failure (well, other than per-mature failure :lol. I know I'm always swapping them out (even when I used MH) so usable lifetime becomes somewhat moot. Am I unusual in this regard?

When it comes to LED users you are not alone. I have known so many that jumped on the new and improved AI fixture every time they came out. Very similar to the IPhone craze.

 

[dz6t]

Led efficiency for everyday lighting is largely based on the narrow spectrum it can focus on to turn electricity to photon. For example, our eyes are sensitive to green and yellow, so led can be engineered to be dominated in that reagent of spectrum without wasting energy on UV, IR etc. (which metal halide does use quite a bit of energy to emit spectrum in those areas).
Led run hot too but heat is removed upward via fan.
Metal halide radiate IR down into the tank, hence the heat effect.




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[ca1ore]

I have known so many that jumped on the new and improved AI fixture every time they came out.

I'd like to think that I don't have 'bright shiny object' syndrome to quite that degree, but I have made my way through four different iterations of LED - TruLumen strips (dimmed down well but sucked in every other regard), ReefBreeders Gen1, Kessil and Radion Gen4. I don't think I'm changing again anytime soon.

 

[dz6t]

The degree of technical knowledge required to change out an LED on say a Radium, is far beyond unscrewing a bulb.
In order to light my Aquarium, even moderately, I require two Radion LED lights. A cost of $1600. Plus mounting hardware and remote connectivity, I'm looking at about $2k with tax. If I have to replace them, I'm looking at an additional $1600.
So my cost to moderately light my Aquarium for 10 years would cost me $2-$3600k

MH lights are not much better on cost. The bulbs costing about $50-$90 each. X's 2
I ran my lights for approximately 8 months on average.
Unit cost: $1k
Bulb cost over 10 years: $2k approx.

So we're in the same ballpark for lights, the difference being MH will light much better for the same cost.

The electricity cost is arguable.
If you're running 1 or 2 300 watt heaters on an LED tank which may require to be on all year round.




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If you run radium MH bulbs and replace them at 8 month, please send them to me and I can squeeze another year of life out of them.



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[dz6t]

Just to be clear, I use MH and Led as well as t5. Not all led created equally.


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