Serious question: Are LEDs actually more efficient than T5 or MH?

They sell bulbs, not exactly unbiased because they have a financial stake in the advice they give. How many people have actually kept their LED for 5 years? The Solaris came out in 2006, how many of those are still in use? How many first gen AI's? Why?

I am aware they sell bulbs. I looked at manufacturer specs too, which you should know if you are replying to this post. Depending on how you utilize the bulbs that is not even off that far. At LEAST 11% loss of output and color at half bulb life, and depending on how much you run them, that 3000 hours could be up in under or over a year. The way you respond you would think that i said MH's need replaced every week.

I am not the manufacturer of, nor a sales person for, AI or Solaris. Therefore I do not particularly know or care how those brands, which I did not research and then purchase for myself, have lasted. Nor do I have to answer for them if they have failed in some way.

If someone buys something with a short warranty and it comes back to bite them, guess whose fault that is? In my case I have a 5 year warranty on the meanwell driver, and have actually taken proper measures to ensure the longevity of the LEDs, and if anything goes wrong that is not covered by warranty, it is at most a $4.50 point of failure.

Efficiency is more than numbers on paper, if you can light a larger area with less electrical efficiency, then you are being more efficient in the use of the product, this has advantages over more electrical efficient but less capable LED's.

.....Did I or did I not already state TWICE that to truly know how much power you are using, and if you are getting proper lighting, you have to measure?

Spreading out the coverage has already been discussed, and is perfectly possible. The title of the thread is "Are LEDs actually more efficient than T5 or MH?" The actual issue IS electrical efficiency, the actual amount of light that can be created per watt of power, because ultimately beyond that it is only a matter of proper implementation to get the right spread.

You are not understanding, many mfg's of LED fixtures would claim it was equal to a 250 watt MH, but would never say what they tested against, some 250's have pathetically low PAR, like under 20 and some have over 100. They would never say because they used it as a marketing ploy, not a reality. I prefer to deal in reality.

Again, i do not represent any company that has made misleading claims, nor am i making any misleading claims. If you fall for gimmicky marketing, that isn't my fault or problem.

Irrelevant, that is why we change bulbs and it isn't $160 bucks a piece, I pay $80 for a Radium, if it makes two years, that is $40 a year. I frink more coffee than that in a few weeks. Comparatively, it is really cheap.

I said $80-160 for a 400 watt. You are trying to counter my point by saying you pay 80(within the range i just said) but for a 250watt(not even what i was talking about.) Hmmmm.....

Sanjay has tested the most popular ballasts and bulbs showing the wattage draw at the outlet. I am getting the feeling you have zero experience with MH. Is that a reality?

Really, someone did the very thing that i'm saying you should do? Man you sure showed me.

Most people buy a fixture for lack of ability, time or desire to DIY, this is just a reality.

Did I at any point say that people can't use whatever lighting they want? If people don't want to DIY, they don't have to. In many situations though it's almost necessary, as there may be no products on the market that fit your exact circumstances. Not to mention this hobby was born as DIY and continues to be a dream hobby for DIYers and tinkerers. It is certainly not forgiving to people who have a lack of ability, time, or desire to DIY, and that is reality.

Perhaps you can create a guide from your research, and take that and go back in time to around 2006 so that no one from then until now can make a poor decision. You do realize that LED's have been evolving, and evolution takes time, failures and successes. Most hobbyists don't have time to pour over information like a few others do, they trust that what they are buying is good from the start. For you to say they made a bad decision and it is their own fault is silly, unless you are willing to build everyone who wants to replace the units you feel are a bad choice with one of your DIY's, for free of course. All of us need to thank those who were the early adopters of LED's, their dollars, failures and successes are what led us where we are today. For a long time in this hobby, the DIY crowd has done the most research and development, and that is usually adopted by mfg.'s in the next great LED of this year, which will be replaced by next years latest and greatest. Meanwhile many of us are still running our old and antiquated equipment that works as flawlessly today as it did when new, many years earlier.

No, it really is not silly to expect people to research expensive purchases before they invest their money. If they don't, the blame is on them. It is hard to believe anyone would even argue this. This kind of thinking is why the saying, "a fool and his money are soon parted," exists. Even if you do trust a company and they mislead you, that in and of itself is not necessarily any sort of indicator as to the viability of the technology. If a company is selling cheap chinese LED fixture and they don't last or don't perform, that means nothing in particular about the quality or performance of say phillips or cree LEDs.

Yes LED's are continuing to evolve, and that means absolutely nothing in this conversation. He didn't ask, "were LEDs actually blah blah blah in 2006?" He is asking now, in 2014, if they are really more efficient. Also the fact that LED technology is improving means nothing as well. Current generation LEDs do not somehow make the older ones less effective. If they worked to begin with, that will not have changed because a new model was released. Why do i need to go back in time to build light fixtures for people in the past? How is any of this crap relevant to the question the OP had?

I am still guessing you have virtually no experience with MH.

No I have not used MH. Why would that matter in reference to anything I have said? I am making suppositions based upon what experience i do have, information that is available to me, and common sense. While at the same time encouraging people to actually TEST and find out for themselves what is more efficient and effective. I don't need experience to do that.
 
I have two ocean revive led lights and I think they are 120w each. (I could be wrong) wich is more then my 4 bulb t5 I use to run. When I switched my power bill went down by $12. That was running them at about 60%. I am running them at 100% now but only for the last few weeks so I don't know what my power bill is yet.
 
From my experience when I switched from a 250 MH/PC combo to around 150 watt DIY LEDs, my power bill went down $20 a month. Nothing changed. I was in a tiny apt.
 
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Researchers have shown that it's possible for an LED to emit more energy than is being consumed.

According to their calculations, as the voltage is halved, the input power is decreased by a factor of 4, while the emitted light power scales linearly with voltage so that it’s also only halved. In other words, an LED’s efficiency increases as its output power decreases. (The inverse of this relationship - that LED efficiency decreases as its output power increases - is one of the biggest hurdles in designing bright, efficient LED lights.)

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-03-efficiency.html#jCp

When I designed my fixture, I was told I was crazy for using 36 emitters over a 10g tank. However, I run them at less than 50%. The passively cooled heat sink doesn't rise above 80 degrees. Running them like this, they are more efficient so less heat is created, and the cooler operating temps results in longer emitter life.
 
Researchers have shown that it's possible for an LED to emit more energy than is being consumed.

When I designed my fixture, I was told I was crazy for using 36 emitters over a 10g tank. However, I run them at less than 50%. The passively cooled heat sink doesn't rise above 80 degrees. Running them like this, they are more efficient so less heat is created, and the cooler operating temps results in longer emitter life.

It's impossible for anything to emit more energy than is being consumed (exceed 100% efficiency). That just states that some LEDs are more efficient when not being driven as hard.

I think using a larger number of diodes is definitely the way to go.
 
It's impossible for anything to emit more energy than is being consumed (exceed 100% efficiency). That just states that some LEDs are more efficient when not being driven as hard.

I think using a larger number of diodes is definitely the way to go.

It specifically states that it's possible to achieve unity power conversion efficiency.

In their experiments, the researchers reduced the LED’s input power to just 30 picowatts and measured an output of 69 picowatts of light - an efficiency of 230%.
 
I don't need experience to do that.

The only thing I can add, to help you understand what I am trying to say is that if it takes 350 watts of LED's to match the output of a 330 watt MH system, it doesn't matter how efficient the LED's are, though on paper they may look great, in function they may not compare.

This is the reason I decided against switching to all LED's, it did not make any sense. For many people the switch made sense, high electrical rates, the incorrect belief that they had to keep their tank temps in a narrow range, the poor system design that made a chiller a necessity, etc. etc. The best LED tanks I have seen use as many LED's as they can fit over the tank, negating any of the paper advantages of the LED's. :beer:
 
It specifically states that it's possible to achieve unity power conversion efficiency.

Ok, I see how that's possible after reading a bit more about it. They basically turned the LED into a heat pump.

Not exactly useful for lighting applications, but definitely interesting.
 
If the light output also drops, then you will need more emitters to get back to the same light level in the tank. How is this more efficient for lighting the tank? Isn't the goal to provide a proper amount of light over our corals? I must be missing something.
 
If the light output also drops, then you will need more emitters to get back to the same light level in the tank. How is this more efficient for lighting the tank? Isn't the goal to provide a proper amount of light over our corals? I must be missing something.

I you're running 5 3 watt LED's at 100% (assuming 1 Amp max drive current), you're looking at about 450 lumens at 9 watts (depending on exact emitter). If you run 10 3 watt LED's at 30%, you're looking at about 780 lumens, but you're only using 3 watts of power.

rebel%20lumens%20per%20watt%20vs%20current%20in.png
 
Those aren't the same LEDs? Isn't that only showing the difference in older units vs. newer units? It also appears from your text that you are running twice as many LEDs but not getting twice the light.
 
Those aren't the same LEDs? Isn't that only showing the difference in older units vs. newer units? It also appears from your text that you are running twice as many LEDs but not getting twice the light.


Twice the number of emitters, 1/3 of the power consumed. For 3 watts of power used, you're getting 1.73 times the amount of light when compared to half the number of emitters at max rated current.

The actual led model doesn't much matter. I'm only referencing the red trace, not comparing the two. Efficiency droop affects all LED's.
 
I get that, and more importantly you are getting more coverage and less shadowing. The wattage difference isn't really enough to make a great difference in the big picture. The available space and budget may be a factor for some tanks. I am in full agreement that more emitters is the answer, at least for getting an equivalent amount of light as compared to a proper MH or T5. One look at tbd320's tank shows the benefit of more emitters, at least before he added the Radiums to the tank.
 
The title says it all. We often see efficiency touted as an advantage for LEDs, but I've never actually seen lumen/watt comparisons of common aquarium lights.

Doing some reading lately, I was surprised to learn that in the "real world" (not labs), LEDs are at best on par with T5s and gas discharge lamps (metal halides) in terms of luminous efficiency. The data I read suggested that off-the-shelf LEDs are usually in the 50-90 lumen watt range (using more generous numbers), with T5s and MHs both falling into the 60-110 lm/w range (including ballasts). Virtually every direct comparison I've seen shows T5s being more efficient, usually substantially so, than LEDs. I have not found as many direct comparisons for MHs, so I'm going by the "Standard" quoted figures.

I've done a few google searches, but can't find any data comparing commonly used aquarium T5, MH, and LED bulbs/lighting units.

It seems to me that if this same trend holds true for aquarium lighting, many LED users may be dramatically under-lighting their tanks relative to T5 and MH users. If that is the case, it goes a long way towards helping explain why some LED users have had results that didn't quite live up to their expectations. One might actually need just as many, if not more, watts of LED light to replace T5s or MHs.

Can any of the resident experts chime in?

yes, my experience is exactly that, the tanks are often underlit.. i repeat it over and over, the industry says: you can replace your 400 watts mh light with our magic 25 watts led fixture..... a bit sarcastic.... you nearly need the same power.
again here a direct comparison from my tank:

1000 watts mh and t5 combo:
IMG_3395_1_zps41602063.jpg


and here 760 watts diy led. yes so much power was needed to beat my old and beloved lighting.
imagejpg2_zps88a97ca4.jpg
 
That is exactly the point Michael, and often overlooked or ignored.

FWIW I think the tank looks better, from that angle at least, with the MH and T5.
 
That is exactly the point Michael, and often overlooked or ignored.

FWIW I think the tank looks better, from that angle at least, with the MH and T5.

yes, the old lighting lies in the 10-12k range, the new led light is 'colder', a mix of 12k, 20k and royal blues. there is something missing when compared to mh/ t5, you are right. but i never go back :)
btw. i am still not sure, if this is the final version of my fixture.
 
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