Solaris Lights

[hahnmeister]

The efficiency ratings I am coming up with are from the luxeon website. Mfg's tend to be liberal with their output ratings, but the ultra-white and blue luxeons are only boasting an output of 50 lumens per 3 watt unit. Thats a pretty crappy efficiency rating.

Most of the technical data is in the spec sheets by Cree, Phillips, Sylvania, etc. Halides are up at 100-105 lumens per watt. T5s are at about 85-95 lumens/watt. Leds on the market are just nowhere near that yet (50 lumens per watt tops, often less). There are ones in development, but thats all. The one thing about LEDs that makes them seem more efficient is their near laser-like abillity to focus the light they do make into a tight beam. When you view a LED off-angle by more than say, 10 degrees, its output just, well... stops. From the side, a LED looks pretty much dark. This makes them great as automotive headlights, but I dont know if its that great inside my reef tank. Some of the better DIY LED applications I have seen are with the use of lenses on the LEDs to help spread out the light, but then the efficiency of the LEDs drops very fast. Expending that 10 or 20 degree wide beam of light to 30 or 40 degrees... well... do the math... lets say you have an 12" diameter spotlight at 24", and you expand it to 24"... thats an increase in area of 4x! So if you take the same amount of output and cover that larger area... you just cut your output to 1/4! Halides and T5s, by comparison, have reflectors that bleed light all over the place, but at least they provide light to more places in a tank. Imagine what they could do if there was a way to focus 90% or more of their light into a 10-20 degree arc like LEDs... WOW. We could light a 6' tall tank with 150wattDE halides!

 

[PFO Lighting]

hahnmeister,
"
Here, check out this DIY system by Zachtos that uses the same luxeon stars that the PFO uses... http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/s...25&pagenumber=9
His final results, with 24 of the luxeons @3 watts each, was less output than his previous 26 watts of PC! OUCH!"

I expected more out of you. I usually see very informative and thought provocative comments from you. Since you have played with LED's you should know that the number of variables in the light output of LED's and then putting that light onto a surface is extreme. So one persons first attempt with a little money to design a DIY version of the Solaris is a very poor comparison. Lets think about some of the reasons the DIY project did not perform well:
1. Heat dissipation. As LED's get hot their light output goes down. This is the primary reason why DIY's can not produce a DIY project to compete with the Solaris.

2. Drive Current. What was the actual power running through the LED's? every inch of wire increases the resistance which decreases the current which than again decreases the light output. Was he overdriving the LED's and increasing light output which was being off set by the light loss due to increase heat or was he underdriveing the LED's and not producing enough light.

3. Optics. How is he getting the light that is produced onto the surface he wants to light?

To make a simple LED moon light is easily accomplished by a DIY project. But to replace a metal halide light, at any wattage, requires a huge amount of LED knowledge and massive amounts of money for R&D.

We spent 3 years developing this fixture. We had it tested at the Lumileds testing laboratory. We have had more hours of design meetings with Lumiled engineers, heat sink engineers, and power supply engineers than I care to think about. I could fill a room of failed attemps at designing the Solaris. By the way, in the last 3 days I have spent 24 hours on designing LED fixtures and watching them either fail or perform poorly. And I have been doing this for 3 years!

So it disapppoints me that you would use a first try from a DIY person to compare and degrade the Solaris. I understand you are unimpressed with the Solaris for a heavy SPS tank. There are obviously others who disagree with you. My position is it depends on the size of the tank. If it is 6" deep then there is no problem. If it is 48" deep than it will not work. If it is somewhere in between then there are a large number of variables.

By the way you are one of the posters that I pay attention to.
I have gleaned some very valuable insights from some of your posts. I can only improve the products we supply by comments like yours and other people who either have our products or do not and then state why they do or do not like the products.

And yes I have already heard your comments on our T5 fixtures. But I refuse to invest in a technology that is probably going to die within the next 5 years.

Patrick Ormiston
PFO Lighting Inc

 

[hahnmeister]

True, drivers and the wiring do change the output of LEDs alot, but as you said... you just spent 24 hours testing LED's and most failed. optics as well... lenses and/or reflectors could have gone a long way with Zachtos.

True, Zachtos didnt do things as well as could have been done, and Im sure you guys at PFO are dedicated to what you do. I have no doubt that in a couple years time you guys will have units that everyone will be drooling over... but right now, I just dont see it. The technology just isnt there. You are still talking about a technology that has about 1/3-1/2 the output per watt of a halide or T5. Focusing that light is one way around it, but it comes with its own problems (like spotlight burning of corals). Im not trying to say that because one kid's DIY attempt with luxeons didnt do much that then the Solaris must not be worth it... just that LED's arent where we want them to be yet. I mean, come on... I found the exact performance numbers for luxeons... 35 to 40 lumens per watt!?!? And thats on a good day... the white ones are in the 25 range. With Halides of T5s, a good DIYer can even make a light system that is top-notch, sometimes better than the MFG's make.

I had the chance to look over a unit in Atlanta... a 4' unit in a store. I had my PAR meter on me because I wanted to do some readings on the corals being grown by a nifty store there called Cappucino Bay (they use 1000watt 20,000K bulbs in lumenarcs with light movers and get some killer results with their frag farming vats), and another store nearby had a Solaris running, and when I asked to take readings, the employees were all for it since I happened to have the PAR meter out in the car. The PAR readings were alright. It was a 20,000K unit, and the readings were pretty much on PAR with Dana's original write-up, thats why I didnt bother making a big deal about it. Dont get me wrong, I would rather use these than XM 20,000K halides, but those bulbs blow anyways. When I used the XDE 20,000Ks, I could hardly grow anything with them.

The bulb husbandry problems are another thing. The output of some of these LEDs is so narrow with the blue that you have to add other colors in or green and pink corals just dont look good. Mothra's blog at frags.org shows that first hand with T5s. From the feedback on the PFOs, as well as the decision to include green LEDs in the arrays, it seems that there are some spectrum things to resolve as well...??? Perhaps adding some 3000Kish or Red LED's will happen in the future?

 

[brad23]

I would look at T6 instead

 

[PFO Lighting]

To answer your question on Spectrum. We currently do not see changing the spectrum of any of the LED's. Dana printed our spectrum curves in his article. Since the article we have added a couple of green LED's to help enhance one piece of the spectrum that appeared to be a little low in relation to the rest of the spectrum.

As far as the strong blue content. We supply both a blue 20K look and a 13K look to appeal to a broader customer base. As we all know everyone has an opionion on color and they are all different.

Thank you for your comments.
Patrick Ormiston

 

[killagoby]

Here's my other problem. I need the lights to be 30" long. Are there any Solaris or T5 fixtures that are that length? I'd rather not hang anything from my ceiling.