Led Lighting...has anyone done the math?

Joel_155

Joel_155

New member
Hey All,
First off if someone has already mentioned this in a thread I haven't seen I'm sorry for bringing up an issue already discussed. But my quest is pretty clear in the title of this post. Has anyone done the math on LED lighting. I'm extremely new to the reef keeping hobby and have a dry tank, no sump and I'm curing dry rock in order to start my build. The low power cost of LED is really attractive but is it worth spending $3000 (110 gallon tank...going for sps build). What kind of difference would you get on your power bill?
If there's another thread where this discussion has already occurred please direct me. At this point just looking for ideas and the best way to set up my tank. How much does non LED lighting cost (assuming 20k range...or whatever to grow SPS...really new here)? Is it like $1000 vs $2500? Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!
 
Leds work great. But u should DIY kets and get a better lighting fixture and do how u want you tank to look
 
Hard numbers are going to be hard to come by - there are many factors, most of which vary for each of our tanks.

LEDs are only around 20% more efficient (give or take - they're improving all the time) than T5HO, and a bit less than that more efficient than MH (which is actually fairly efficient). However, the heat profile is vastly different which can lead to tremendous decreases in electric use:

They radiate most of their heat UP/out, rather than down into the water. This means you can mount them significantly closer to the surface of the water than you can MH (leading to less light leaked, so less wattage needed for a given amount of light) and when using them in place of T5 or MH, the chiller either won't be needed, can be much smaller, or will run A LOT less. Since chillers are tremendous energy sucking devices this can lead to a substantial decrease in overall electric consumption. (I don't air condition my house and use a 1/10HP chiller for my 100g tank. It does the job fine, even in 98 degree weather. Using such a small chiller wasn't possible when I used MH lighting.)

They don't need replacing as often - so amortize out the cost over ~10 years, taking into account the cost of replacing MH or T5 bulbs annually.

If using them instead of T5 you get the added benefit of shimmer. That's largely aesthetic, but nice.
 
For some people they may pay for themselves within a couple years, for others they will never pay for themselves. If you use a chiller and live in a high electric rate area, then LEDs will greatly reduce the cost of runing your tank. If your electric rates are low or average, and heat is not really an issue....then you will only be saving enough on electric and bulbs to break even over the life of the LED fixture.

I have tried a DIY LED setup and they are nice and would work, but I prefer the look of halides. The savings are just not worth it for me, I would only be saving about $16 a month, including MH bulbs, by using LEDs. In 2-3 years, as the price comes down and better more precise LEDs(for our needs) become available, then LEDs will become a no brainer for most.
 
LEDs are the future of lighting for aquariums. With rising electricity costs, they are immediately attractive. In Europe, I save 50% on current in relation to my 2x 250W/2x 54W halide/T5 combi. The difference in current is parly due to the efficiency of LEDs plus the fact that they are dimmable and do not run at 100% the whole time. A good unit will allow amazing flexibility. My Illumina will pay for itself in 2.5-3 years. My last unit cost me €250 per annum in bulbs alone.

Check out the threads on Vertex and AI, where users are giving lots of feedback.

LEDs are different to previous lighting systems and some people have not come to appreciate them, being stuck in the look they had under T5 or HQI. Personal tastes, of course. For Europeans, there will be little choice in the next decade, as other light-types are being phased out due to lack of efficiency/toxicity (for good or for bad! Politicians/Lobyists, I hate 'em).
 
+1 on James77
I am in the same situation and struggle to spend the amount of money that it cost to switch over. I currently run MH's and T-5's on both of my tanks and love the color, shimmer and success I have had with them. As stated above, as more LED's manufactures come on the market the cheap they will get and than it will be a no brainer.
 
Well... you need to start by assuming a high end LED fixture that would replace a 250 watt MH - and generate comparable PAR. For this you are probably talking a minimum of $600 or so in today's cost, but prices are coming down. LED's are NOT like MH or T5 because they keep getting brighter, more efficient and lower cost - all at the same time. LED costs are currently dropping 50% every three years, and are expected to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Eventually LEDs will replace ALL aquarium lighting - just as they will replace ALL household lighting. So I wouldn't invest TOO much in a T5 or MH fixture regardless, because in my personal opinion they will be obsolete within 5 years and there won't be a resale market.

In terms of electricity savings, you need to have a good understanding of your current marginal rate of electricity in terms of $/kWh. Marginal means "what rate you are currently paying on the LAST watt you use each month" (the highest priced electricity) because this is what you will save by going to a more efficient lighting source. Best quality T5's are going to achieve about 80-100 lumens per watt. Best quality MH will be slighting better - say 90-100 lumens per watt. CREE LED's (XP series) were running around 110 lumens per watt (so not much better efficiency) but the new XM series are getting up to 160 lumens per watt. Adjust for PAR according to whatever calculation you want to use - and also include some adjustment for the fact that MH cannot be run with a dimmer while most LED fixtures run dimmer in the morning and evening and only peak for four hours or so per day. Electricity savings can start to add up - even if you are talking $5 per month - that's $600 over the course of 10 years.

If you buy a new 250watt 20K Radium MH bulb every 9 months for 10 years, it adds up to $1100 - $1200 (using prices from MarineDepot). This is not insignificant - particularly because no one REALLY knows how long LED fixtures may last. We may see 1st generation LED's generating 90% of their rated intensity 20 years from now - no one really knows, because it depends in part on how hot you run them.

Water cooling may be a greater or lesser deal for folks. Some people run chillers - and you don't have to run chillers with LED's so that saves the cost of the chiller unit itself (which could be $500 - $1000 or more for larger tanks) as well as the electricity. Otherwise people usually have to buy and run fans, which in turn dramatically increases evaporation rates for your tank, and causes other issues (like having one more system in your tank that can fail and cause a disastrous tank crash).

All in all I think LED's are probably break-even or better proposition for most folks right now. If you are looking for customization like dimming and adjustable lighting temps, LED's are the only game in town. Plus many LED fixtures allow for upgrade-ability in the future. I think the biggest attraction, personally, is to be able to buy a fixture that you stick up over the tank, dial in, and then forget about for 10 years :) Reef tanks are complicated enough, and taking lighting out of the maintenance list is a huge benefit.

P.S. for fun I recommend to anyone who is interested in LED's to download and read CREE's annual report (they are a public company). You are just now seeing LED fixtures and bulbs in big box retail. In two years they will be 50% of the lighting shelf space.
 
Last edited:
atreis said:
LEDs are only around 20% more efficient (give or take - they're improving all the time) than T5HO, and a bit less than that more efficient than MH (which is actually fairly efficient).
Click to expand...

Your data seems not accurate.

Check page 23 of the link below for actual application comparison of various lighting fixtures(hence lighting technology) in usable lumens/watt around year 2008.

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/portland2008_day1_denbaars.pdf

Currently on the market, a fixture of ~$400 can generate PAR above a 250Mh
 
Last edited:
WingoLED said:
Your data seems not accurate.

Check page 23 of the link below for actual application comparison of various lighting fixtures(hence lighting technology) in usable lumens/watt around year 2008.

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/portland2008_day1_denbaars.pdf

Currently on the market, a fixture of ~$400 can generate PAR above a 250Mh
Click to expand...

This is old data (from 2008). Things have actually improved even since this presentation was made. In the article they talk about "hypothetical" LED efficiency of 152 lumen/watt (for "white" LED). There are LED's on the market today that exceed this. A recent article in LED's Magazine refers to a 4600K white light LED developed by Nichia that achieves 250 lumens/watt - which is 2.5X the efficiency of the BEST MH or T5 fluorescent.
 
BonsaiNut said:
This is old data (from 2008). Things have actually improved even since this presentation was made. In the article they talk about "hypothetical" LED efficiency of 152 lumen/watt (for "white" LED). There are LED's on the market today that exceed this. A recent article in LED's Magazine refers to a 4600K white light LED developed by Nichia that achieves 250 lumens/watt - which is 2.5X the efficiency of the BEST MH or T5 fluorescent.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reminder. I do know the data that Nichia is a leader in the field as I work with many LED manufacturers on a regular basis.

It's just a simple search on the web at the moment I type the previous response and I got an old data chart which stated efficiency of LED vs others fixtures. Since most of the aquarium LEDs CREE are based on Xlamp platform XRE or XPE. The chart of year 2008 happens to be quite representative(only slightly lower due to the newer more efficient LEDs) of our current aquarium LEDs vs current fluorescent technology. However, when we measure PAR, the ratio is MUCH higher for the properly chosen LEDs over fluorescent techonology due to the fact that the latter produce a lot of NON PAR light. I personally agreed that the ratio is about 2.5X in terms of PAR for averaged LED vs. T5 currently on the market.
 
Last edited:
WingoLED said:
Your data seems not accurate.

Check page 23 of the link below for actual application comparison of various lighting fixtures(hence lighting technology) in usable lumens/watt around year 2008.

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/portland2008_day1_denbaars.pdf

Currently on the market, a fixture of ~$400 can generate PAR above a 250Mh
Click to expand...

My "data" was a rough estimate, as stated. :) Even so:

On page 23, MH is 70 lumens/watt, while LED is 71 lumens/watt. 120-150 seems to be the going rate for most fixtures, although there are some highly regarded fixtures that claim to produce better spectrum at a cost in fewer lumens per watt (Orphek). So, it could be 20% better (for something like Orphek) or 80% better (Vertex, etc...) but only for the brightest of the bulbs in the fixtures - to get the color temperature we want they also mix in some bulbs that are less efficient but produce light in a desirable spectrum. I've not seen numbers for the overall efficiency of these fixtures, taking all bulb types used into account.

If you're looking at the columns that take into account efficiency of the fixture, a lot of effort is put into making aquarium fixtures significantly more efficient than the average commercial fixtures they're talking about (e.g. the silver coated reflectors in ATI fixtures, etc...). IMO, those columns aren't very useful columns for us.
 
I would add to your argument material that, for our purposes, only white LEDs are effectivly rated in lumens per watt. As you move into the blue spectrum, the lumen values drop, although the PAR/PUR values shoot up. PUR is what we want, not necessarily lumens. This makes a comparison very difficult.
 
Some reefers buy leds to save on electricity bills only to find that without their halides they need 1000w of heaters to keep the water temps up...
 
Let's not forget comfort! My room is small and my 400W MH generated so much heat that even with the airconditioning cranked it was unconfortable. I switched to 2 AI SOLs this January and my room, tank and everything is cooler. I don't have to run the AC as much and I can close the window during the winter!
 
A DIY fixture consisting of 24 XP series Crees will rival a 250 MH and only consume approximately 72 watts depending on drive current. LEDs will easily pay for themselves in a few years for most people, and this doesn't even take account for lower ac bills. If you are wanting more accurate info jump over to the DIY LEDs thread you will find all you need to know. As stated above yes pur is very important but as for par readings I have par values over 1000 in my 24 gallon aquapod.

For a 110 gallon a DIY fixture would run about $1000 for an SPS tank.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

K
Radion time help. (Long post)
Replies
2
Views
138
kj swans
K
K
Fluval Reef 4.0 LED Nano Power Level for 15G?
Replies
3
Views
241
kingyking888
K
T
Alternative Lighting for Biocube 29
Replies
0
Views
115
thommyboy12183
T
J
Corals for the first time!
Replies
14
Views
3K
griss
griss
S
Lighting Question - Glass penetration
Replies
7
Views
282
xabo
xabo
Back
Top