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!

[lastlight]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Now, assuming upfront purchase costs of LED and halides at say $400 each

Yeah $400 will get you one of the units but certainly not two which you'd have to do to try and have equivalent output. I do like the no replacing bulbs idea though that sure sounds nice. We both know radiums aren't all that cheap.

[Delphinus]

Well, I meant it as $400 for one halide, and two times $400 for two Ecoxotics, so the uplift is only the difference $400 and it's only the uplift that you want to look at when comparing that against the energy savings over time.

It's hard to do a completely fair comparison because you can get considerable savings by buying used in either case, except that there will be more halides available second hand right now (over time surely there will be more options for the LEDS as people shift hardware around or shutdown tanks, etc., but for now, there probably aren't many available second hand); and then you can also take into play that DIY options for LED and halides tend to yield lower costs up front (but then we're comparing two completely different things altogether).

One can reasonably expect to replace halides on a 12 month interval but I'm curious as to the true longevity of the LED units, is it reasonable to expect 0% replacement of LEDS over 60 months? And if there is the occasional dud LED out of a fixture, how easy will that be? I think only time can tell for sure but at least the theory is that the effective lifespan is closer to 5 years.

[lastlight]

I sure like the simplicity with halides or even T5s for that matter. Either the ballast goes or the bulb does. Well...or the cat eats into the power cord. Somedays that would solve a problem before it made one but I didn' say that. I'll stop derailing a review thread now.