There are lots of variables in the whole scenario. Supplemental lights, chillers, heaters, fan, ect. Well even LEDs have something called phantom power and that can be quite significant too. But those costs wont bridge the 4+ years difference. All I did was to show a very basic cost benefit of the claim 'LED saves money' and not saying LED is no good. For example, if money permits, I would love to get mitras but not for saving s through cutting down on electricity bill but rather because the advantages that LED provides and the technologies itself. :mrgreen:

But those costs wont bridge the 4+ years difference.

the saying is leds cost less per month then mh do, not that youll recover the cost of a fixture in a year or less.......we know you wont save that much or there wouldnt be mh's still around.
you proved it yourself , leds do save money....how much money they save probably doesnt add up to a light fixtures cost when upgrading but the claims are true , they cost less to run then mh.

now the next argument is do leds do what mh's do lol?

You can certainly save money with DIY, but for some things it is just not worth it to me. That's why I have Radions and an Apex. Maybe not the very best in class, but sure beats anything I could build myself. I also wouldn't build my own skimmer.

But when it comes to tanks, sumps, overflows, cabinets, plumbing, electrics, ATO's, reactors, filters, etc, there are lots of opportunity to save money as well as optimize performance and tailor to your preferences.

I use the same philosophy with my airplanes. I build them for performance and personal preference, and save a lot of money. However, I still buy the best engine and propeller for it. I won't build those components.

At $200 a year in bulb replacement costs, my DIY LED will pay for itself in 4 (2 1/2 more) years. Thats with the full spectrum upgrade.

Reduce your electrical consumption to decrease your tanks carbon footprint and it's effect on the wild reefs. Saving money is nice too, but this hobby is definitely not for the financially challenged... it requires a very understanding spouse.

Absolutely. They do save money and if everyone moves to LED to light everything, a huge difference can be made in terms of consumption. A 50w savings might not be much on the bill but on a larger scale, its huge. But the self benefit wont be coming quick :p

About which one is better, you are in a better stance to draw the conclusion. :)

If somebody comes up with an awesome power savings plan, I may send cash :) My bill for the last 2 months was $850

Oh sweet humanity...once human lived without electricity...and now even fishes and corals cant!

Sell the tank...invest some money on big piles of napkins to whip the tears of sadness and get a beta tank! I promise...it would be the best investment EVER! Even better than LEDs :lol:

That's a less than stellar plan :)

That's why the 2nd step:

"invest some money on big piles of napkins to whip the tears of sadness" ;)

Well, we can preach about it, but we're still all hypocrites, if we keep fish/corals, drive cars, ride a bus, live in houses, and surf the internet. If we're really serious, we should go look for a cave to live in.

I think the only way to save humanity for the long term is have less of it. And it will happen one way or the other.... Maybe an asteroid....

Meanwhile, I will keep enjoying my fish/corals, and all the other good things in life for myself and my family. I didn't get to choose my life and time, but will make the most of what I have.

Seriously, what are the chances that ....oh, wait...:)

Love the discussion all. Great info.

Not sure if I wish to change to LED just yet..

May as well make the switch before the world ends...


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If you want LED to save money, then its not a good choice.

If you want LED for its versatility, less heat issue and coolness, then LED is awesome!

Remember, LED is like iphone; new stuffs are bound to come out every 6 or 7 months. ;)

Right about the same time you'll be shelling out $$$ to buy new T5 bulbs.
Just saying.

True that. But the quality will be consistent. LEDs will get better over time; T5 and MH are perfectly developed.

How many have changed their T5 fixture to get a "better" fixture and how many have changed their LED fixture to get a better one? ;)

I've always found this sort of product provides interesting info. It'll tell ya exactly what is used and not used!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg

how much would be the bill for 300w high power LEDs in 2 months ?

300w x number of hours = kwh
kwh x price of electricity = cost.

it depends on how long theyre run for and how much power costs. if you ran them for 12h and electricity is 8.5c per kwh like it is here then:
300 x 12 = 3600wh or 3.6kwh. 3.6kwh x 60 days = 216kwh
216kwh x 0.085$ = $18.36 this doesnt include transmission charges and other fees.

Put up some solar panels, get a wind generator, bank of batteries, grid tie inverter.... if you can stomach the upfront cost. If you have a creek in your back yard, get a micro hydro generator. Then, with your newly installed smart meter, you can sell the excess power back to the Hydro company. If you don't have excess with all your tank goodies, you'll at least cut down your hydro bill.

EDIT... and you'll have back up power if there's an outage with the big guys.

Ok besides debating whether LEDs save money or not let's maybe focus on some real ways of cutting back that power bill. I'll suggest a few things that don't have huge upfront costs.

• Reduce light schedule, simply cut back lighting duty cycle to a minimum.
• Use DC controllable power-heads or alternate AC power-heads provided they can handle the cycling. Alternating pumps can essentially result in half the power compared to always on.
• Reduce flow at night, common practice for many to reduce tank flow at night. Whether it's actually simulating natural effects or not it does reduce power tremendously. For example closed loop pumps or power-heads could shut it off completely at night, DC power-heads could be dialed down.
• Those of us who do use a fair bit of power heating our tanks could use acrylic sumps for better insulation or work on insulating our tanks/sumps to hold heat better.

The light schedule would work, but the powerhead idea would make an almost immeasurable difference. In not sure about vortechs but the koralia powerheads use somewhere around 6-10w each. The effects would be miniscule

its the little things that count , same as saying me throwing one coffee cup out my car window isnt gonna make a difference to such a large world, i think were passed the point in this world where we assume the little things dont make a diifference. the little things arnt so little when you multiply it by the number of people who honor them;)

Well it obviously depends what you use but for example I basically run four Tunze 6105s. If I just ran these full power all the time it would be 35W x 4 x 24 = 3.36 kWh per day. If I alternated flow it would cut it down by half and then if I also just reduced flow to 20% or so at night the savings would be even better at approximately 35W x 0.5 x 4 x 12 + 35W x 0.2 x 4 x 12 = 1.176 kWh per day. Savings of 2.184 kWh per day. This will add up to power savings and while yes not substantial if combined with a few other "miniscule" ideas it could add all add up to something substantial.

Wah ;)

I understand that the little things count. But the op is asking about what changes can be made to save money on his power bill. At 10w it would take 4 days to use 1kwh. 16 days roughly to cost 1$. Heaters, return pump, and lighting are the worst aquarium related. If he wants to make an impact on his power bill, the rest of the house needs to be looked at. A 3 bulb light fixture with incandescent bulbs draws as much as a return pump. I have 4 in my 860sq foot house. How long are lights like that run in a day?changing to cfl bulbs (twistys) draw less than 1/4 the power. Electric range and oven? Probably draw 10+ amps when running. That's 1200w. Electric dryer, same story. These aren't ran continuously mind you, but these add up. Natural gas is far cheaper to run these things.

Those are the changes that are going to make an impact. If your talking about environmental impact, then again, how effective is cutting 8w out of daily power usage when there are so many things worse. I used to work on a drilling rig that used diesel generators. In the winter with the boiler running that rig would burn 2800 liters PER DAY in diesel fuel. This is a larger rig mind you, but there are over 700 running in Alberta last time I heard. These are thtw kinds of things that need to change. Alternative renewable fuel sources. I'd hate to see what kind of pollution 2800l of fuel burn would produce.

I'm not saying that its not worth looking into the little things, but my point is the big things need to be looked at first. 250w down to 100w has me now saving for a new return pump now. I've already switched to leds which for me went from 260w of power compact lighting to 160w of leds.

The next big question is heating. 400w of heaters running is worth looking into.

The only real effective way to reduce energy consumption is to move to a smaller tank... or goldfish :mrgreen:

The bain of keeping little critters outside their environment, the power needs. But SW is sooo interesting!

Agreed. This hobby/obsession/lifestyle is definitely worth it.

Like I said before, go look for a cave,... or be happy and wait for the big asteroid...

When smart meters were put into effect in Ontario I just reversed my light cycle.

I ran the Leds for suppliment in the morning and evening and ran the main lights (t5's) in the evening during "off peak hours.
My power bill decreased and I didnt spend $0.01 extra.

I did also get a programable thermostat and run the furnace/ac more during off peak hours

LED heater anyone? ;)

Put waterproof leds on aluminium blocks and submerge them into the water. They are "efficient" at emitting heat too isinit? ;)

Ok I shouldn't have said that being an electrical major :mrgreen: But then again, its not a crime thinking outside the box (or inside the water over here) ;)

Think about it. People moving to caves but for their typical demand, they would needs:

1. Longer transmission wires (loss)
2. Lights (loss)
3. Heating (loss)
4. Hunt for food (loss)
5. Damage to caves (loss)
6. Bears would be homeless (loss); thegrizz will have answer for this I am pretty sure ;)
7. Bats would be homeless (loss)
8. Batman would be ****ed (loss)
9. More losses (loss)

:mrgreen:

Lol. Being an electrical major, you probably already know this but what makes leds so efficient is they put out more light energy vs heat energy than the other types of lighting. I never realized hoe much heat t5 can produce until I saw a buddy's 6 bulb fixture. Wow.

I switched to an LED tv which uses a quarter the electricity or less compared to my LCD tv (under 50w compared to over 200w). I've also switched out almost all my tank lights (fw & sw) to LED and my house lights are either 9w LED or 13w CFL bulbs. Went from over 2000w MH at my worst MTS to under 400w of LED over the tanks alone.

My oven/toaster oven has convection heating which cooks food faster and more evenly, so save power & works better. I also built a covered pergola over my deck so on hot summer days, instead of turning on the 12000 btu AC unit in the house as much, we now go outside and turn on a couple of fans which use a fraction of the electricity.

I only buy and use EnergyStar appliances, which will pay back the purchase price in energy savings. The Bosch dishwasher uses only $28 worth of electricity for a whole year's worth of regular use and you can really save on power with a more efficient front-loader washing machine compared to top-loader. We also hang dry clothes year round (inside in winter, outside the rest of the year) because the dryer is an energy-sucker.

Even though Burnaby doesn't have the differential time-based rates yet, we usually run the dishwasher & laundry machine overnight anyways.

Sorry I guess I read the topic of the thread differently, figured suggesting ways that could relate to all of us was appropriate.

The biggest (or baddest) power draw we have is our hot tub. It runs from Nov to Apr, and the power bill always goes way up for the winter. We only use it on avg about once a week. Have talked to the wife a few times, about whether it is worth it, but she wants it, so... Talked to the spa shop about a timer, but they say it is not good for the motor to shut it off and on. And we keep the heater on all the time, because we use it more as a spur of the moment decision in the evening, and wouldn't want to wait for it to heat up again.

Speaking of money sinks, though, my Shaw cable (incl internet and phone) is costing us more and more, with all the HD and specialty channels (can't give up my Oasis). We're up to 200 bucks a month on that now!! I tried pulling the "we're switching to Telus" ploy on them, but it hasn't worked so far. Seems that until you actually put in a cancellation, they won't budge.

And not to mention my iPad and Smartphone costs.....

My SW tanks don't looks so bad, when I look at the above, but it does all add up....

Hope I don't run out of money before that asteroid comes....

Hey if you ask some of.the crazies in the US, it'll be a zombie apocalypse.

Sorry, the fiance and I are watching the walking dead atm and I couldn't help it :D

When people calculate out how much they're going to save on LEDs (or not, as the case may be), they always seem to use the total wattage of the fixture in their calculations.

My fixtures never hit their max output, so they're never drawing their max wattage, and even the max output that they do hit is only maintained for 4 hours a day. The rest of the time they're using significantly less than their listed power draw capacity. My radions trip my GFI circuits, so they're not plugged in to my apex unfortunately, but it would be interesting to see what that ramp up and down does to their actual power draw over the course of a day.

On another note, does anyone know whether it's better from an electricity point of view to run more watts of heater, knowing that they'll be running for a shorter period of time, or the less wattage possible, knowing that heaters will have to run longer to maintain temp? I've got 2 300 watt heaters on my system, and when the Apex turns them on, they're usually on for 20 minutes or more. I'm wondering if I should add the other 300 watt heater I've got sitting in a drawer as backup to cut down the total length of time the heaters are running.