Maybe I overstated when I said PAR... and understandeably these guys are going to show off test results that PROMOTE their product to be sure...
http://www.solarisled.com/FAQTechnic...1/Default.aspx
http://www.solarisled.com/FAQTechnic...0/Default.aspx
http://www.solarisled.com/FAQTechnic...9/Default.aspx
Steve, read my posts - I did not say I was rushing out to buy one right away. I would like to see some real world tests before I go spend my kids college fund to have the latest fancy light over my aquarium. I have the greatest amount of respect for your knowledge and wisdom in particular, but if we don't embrace new technology, all of us would still be wondering why our 5th anemone in a year died under our NO flourescent lighting... I don't think we'll see landfills with mountains of chillers in them for quite some time, but this is exciting technology to me... maybe not tomorrow, but I think within 5 - 7 years we may all be looking back wondering how we managed our reefs with the technology we have today. If not with products like this then with products we haven't yet imagined... Even since I have entered the hobby, the technological advances have been staggering. If nobody is at least curious then we stagnate.
C1GY said,
"Another downfall I see is that "The LEDs can be set up for either a maximum color temperature of 20K or 12K at time of order.".
Whith Halides you can just buy a new bulb and make the change any time you want to."
My interpretation from PFO's literature is this...
You can buy a fixture with a maximum Kelvin rating of either 13 or 20K that have the same par value. When you adjust the Kelvin rating through the fancy computer controller, it dims or turns off some of the blue LED's making the fixture adjustable between 6500K and the maximum (13K or 20K), of the fixture. You LOSE PAR doing this obviously, but higher Kelvin bulbs typically have lower PAR ratings, so in effect this works in reverse. One thing you can't do is get a 20K bulb to fire like a 10K bulb and vice versa...
LED lighting is the way of the future without a shadow of a doubt. Highway and city crews have been converting traffic lights to LED for over 5 years now with good reason - energy savings, overall brightness, and by the time the LED's need to be changed, the people that originally installed them will most likely be dead. (Commercial traffic LED's are reported to have a 50 year life cycle - too bad they haven't been around for 50 years to test this
) Automakers are putting them in for exterior lights as well.
I think I'm gonna email PFO about a marketing job now... haha!