kien's Ecoxotic Panorama 36 LED Retrofit review

[Delphinus]

Great review, although something occured to me this morning. What about watts? I was looking up the unit online and note that it is rated at 42w.

This might put an interesting spin on things.

The PAR results showed as approximately half that of the 250w halide, but if you could run two of these units, tilted slightly so that the distribution of light roughly overlaps the same area, you'd still be only at 30% energy used. The problem of course comes in that this is "two units" compared to "one unit" so there is the additional up front cost there. With a 166w advantage the two units have over the halide, assuming a billed rate of $0.10 per kWh and a 12 hour photoperiod and a 30 day month, it's about $6 per month cheaper to run the two units. Now, assuming upfront purchase costs of LED and halides at say $400 each (ignoring potential cost-cutting measures such as purchasing second-hand, or DIY, or even factoring in potential resale value of either down the road), this works out to roughly about a 5 year/60 month period before your reach financial equivalency. Except that it's not 60 months if you factor in the cost of replacement halides at 12 month intervals. So in actual fact the "TCO" may in fact be not all that hugely different.

But then additional factors may also come into play such as using a combination of light sources. If these could be shoehorned into a light rack between halides it could well be a fantastic early morning/late afternoon photoperiod thus allowing a shortening of the photoperiod for the main halides.

If the cost of LEDs continue to become less prohibitive over time I could well see that they will gain more market share.

For now though I still love my Radiums!