GroktheCube
New member
Tank looks good Michael!
Serious question: Are LEDs actually more efficient than T5 or MH?
- Thread starter GroktheCube
- Start date
Hzuiel
New member
Just because it's an expensive hobby doesn't mean you have to be careless with your economics. If you save a few cents in many areas, it all adds up to a nice payoff. In a lot of cases the savings aren't enough to actually replace functioning equipment, but when something breaks, you owe it to yourself and your wallet to find the most efficient and cost effective replacement. It is also totally situational. Someone in an area with cheap power won't care about a minor savings on the bill. Someone in an area with expensive power will see a huge difference on the bill. Unless you just have so much money you don't care, in which case I'd like to know the gps coordinates of the money tree you found.
When you say 760 watts, you are totalling the max drive current like when they say it's a 3 watt led, or a 5 watt led. Representing things that way is a misleading way to say that, you don't run every single LED you have at 100% the entire time they are on or your corals would melt. If you are running them at 50% you are probably using 300 watt at best.
Did you by any chance measure your current draw with the MH's and measure it with the LEDs?
A good comparison video i found was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J57lLmuZNTE
He replaced half of his lighting with an LED fixture. He had to turn it waaaaayyyyyyy wwwaaayyyyyy down, in order to not burn corals, and he's still putting out a ton more par than 2 250watt mh and 2 t5 HO. Being turned down so low means the LEDs are running at a higher efficiency as has been pointed out by GBRU316 already, and that fixture is only a 215 watt fixture at full power. I'd love to see the actual power readings.
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Actually, he's in Germany. He's probably saving somewhere around $750/yr (google says power averages 35 cents per kWh there).
I Europe it makes a much bigger difference than it does here.
Hzuiel, spend some time going over my posts, you will learn all the things that you obviously do not knew about me and how much efficiency of a system means to me. My tank has added between $20 and $25 bucks a month to our electric bill. I am a miser in many ways, but I have figured out how to be efficient over the years, and manage to do it without sacrificing what works.
Hzuiel, spend some time going over my posts, you will learn all the things that you obviously do not knew about me and how much efficiency of a system means to me. My tank has added between $20 and $25 bucks a month to our electric bill. I am a miser in many ways, but I have figured out how to be efficient over the years, and manage to do it without sacrificing what works.
James77
Team RC
What metal halide and T5 setup? There are reflector and bulb/ballast combos that can blast a tank with tons of PAR, and over a wide area.
Hi,
at 7 cents per kw/hr my lighting would be a 2000 watts led monster.... It was not really about saving money
I'm using multi-chip leds and yes the 760 watts is the maximum total power they use. The goal was more to replace my old lighting adequately with led and the tank should be at least as bright (for the human eyes!) as it was before. Burning corals is not an issue in this tank, even when running at full power. Btw this rarely happens, because of the bad weather on Cayman Islands
So, yes, maybe i am still saving some serious amount of money more info about my fixture here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2418979
yes it is around 30 cents per kWh. Its not funny here in germany when its about your electrical bill.
In this video he should turn off all MHs and T5's for some seconds (they have a really wide spread and you cannot see the performance of the leds), i can imagine, the tank would be way darker, when lit with LEDs only. But it is all in the eye of the beholder
GroktheCube
New member
I'm not positing that LEDs cannot generate a lot of PAR.
That does not necessarily mean they are generating more light, or even more light in the PAR or PUR range. LED lights are highly directional. The majority of the light is traveling in a relatively narrow beam compared to either MH or T5 lighting. IOW, when measuring PAR like that, one is only measuring the intensity at the peaks/highlights, not in the shade or under indirect light.
This is why some LED users can have issues with over-lighting corals from above, and under-lighting/shadowing corals from below. I know I had that problem when I was running pure LEDs. I couldn't run them at 100% without bleaching corals, but running them at 60%, I had awesome colors on the tops of corals but mediocre colors on the bottoms and sides. I think this is also why most of the best LED tanks I've seen, like Michael's, are running a very large number of LEDs at a fraction of maximal output.
After doing a little thinking and reading through the discussion in this thread, I've just about finished putting together a CAD/CAM model of an LED fixture using reflectors (and 14 different kinds of diodes for a pretty full spectrum) that I think might help address things. If I get around to building it, I'll post my results. I'm in the middle of putting together a 93 cube in my basement that will serve as a species tank for a large host nem, probably H magnifica. I'm setting it up under a single 250w Radium. That tank should make for a decent test bed.
I have posted this before on here and got clowned, so I will keep this brief... my roommate in college is an engineer at Phillips. He has told me before that it is very likely that there are very few efficiencies in lighting unless you are willing to cut spectrum or something else... in most cases spectrum.
Most of the time, you have to turn down the LEDs because they are producing too much of the wrong spectrum... not because there is too much light. I had a tank outside in the summer in Missouri with PAR well over 1300 and that was not too much light. I have had 6x 250W HQI over a standard 120G with par from 900-1000 at half depth and that was not too much light and everything thrived - even LPS and polyps. It is not a "too much" thing - it is a "too much of the wrong kind" thing.
Most of the time, you have to turn down the LEDs because they are producing too much of the wrong spectrum... not because there is too much light. I had a tank outside in the summer in Missouri with PAR well over 1300 and that was not too much light. I have had 6x 250W HQI over a standard 120G with par from 900-1000 at half depth and that was not too much light and everything thrived - even LPS and polyps. It is not a "too much" thing - it is a "too much of the wrong kind" thing.
because hundreds of researchers was trying to find the best spectrum for t5 bulbs. And probably you are using special bulbs. You can easily kill your corals with t5 as well - just install cheep daylight bulb. The same logic apply to LED - you just need "correct spectrum" and with LEDs it's much easier to change spectrum, and the best part of it: no replacing is needed.
video how easy to change the spectrum from LED:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV4M2gXJSGU#t=30
with t5 or metal halide that's just impossible
Kungpaoshizzi
In Memoriam
I run 2-30 watt Aquabeam Ultima 2000's. They produce prolly 75-85% light intensity compared to my 300w 14k phoenix mh's...I've also had more growth with these on my orange digi's than I ever did with the mh's...(surprised me lol)
Overall I won't go back. If I want to view coloration better, I turn down the whites, but overall the PUR/PAR is much nicer.. That and I'm not blasting the side of the tank with bright light too..
I didn't switch to led's until last year because of this specific light. And I do not miss the bulbs, the heat, the insane evaporation. Efficiency? Heck ya! lol
Overall I won't go back. If I want to view coloration better, I turn down the whites, but overall the PUR/PAR is much nicer.. That and I'm not blasting the side of the tank with bright light too..
I didn't switch to led's until last year because of this specific light. And I do not miss the bulbs, the heat, the insane evaporation. Efficiency? Heck ya! lol
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