melev

When are LEDs going to come down in price?! I'd need two for my 75, so $1500. Ouch.

Still to expensive for my taste.

I'm not going to judge this until I see the fixture itself. There is a lot to factor in when it comes to value versus savings. I did the same thing with my old versus new central HVAC for my home. This summer's blistering heat was no issue for my new A/C while my old one would never have kept up. I kept my house between 72 and 75F daily, even when we were smoldering 110F across the city.

I won't run the numbers on energy savings vs cost, but I imagine at $1500 it would take quite a while to recoup the investment vs MH or T5. My current T5 fixture plus lamps ran ~$500 so...

I would like to see one too though.

Keep in mind that the idea is the bulb is good for five years, so you don't have replacements to purchase. That's the big selling point for many people, it seems. If you buy a new bulb every 9 months, that would be 7 bulbs in 5 years at an average of $70 each. $490 per reflector/unit would be spent in bulb replacement. Assuming the ballast and reflector don't need to be replaced...

If the LED fixtures burn perfectly for 5 years, the savings will be in electricity consumption primarily, but also less need for chillers. You may have to run your heaters though, which is the opposite of saving energy.

LED is going to stay "Expensive" until it becomes more common market. Right now every new fixture is priced WAY up there.. part of this comes from the fact they are always using the latest and greatest in LED technology. Until it hits a platuea I don't see prices leveling off much.

Re: $1500 - My LED unit (I designed it and had it build by a friend almost 3 years ago) cost me $400 in parts alone. That's for a 12g tank. I was due for bulbs at the time and the factory used 3 $22 bulbs. I replaced 9 months. That's $66 every9 months. That's 4 bulb changes of time or $264 I would have spent. Also my tank is SO much cooler now and the tank as a whole is more appealing. I have almost ZERO evap since the upgrade which isn't a bad thing.

Even with all the "Perks" of LED the initial cost is high for most but it's hard to put a price tag on "COOL"

@Marc; yup. I agree the bulb/lamp cost is an ongoing issue with T5/MH. I'd like to see a energy cost comparison coupled with a lamp cost analysis. My guess is the LED would win but I'm curious by how much. My only other concern is long term suitability of LED which I also suspect would still favor the LED.

@BigAl; yup again. I Internet shopped LEDs just before posting, and the Cree LED's are $9-20 per unit so the material cost alone is a big majority of it.

I'm really interested in these Radion units.There is a guy over on RC that has 12 of them over his tank!

Many people are "on the fence" about the new Radion LED fixtures because the software hasn't been released to GHL yet so they can write the needed code to be able to control them. I just got confirmation today on this very topic directly from EcoTech:

Johnathan- Customer Service (Employee) 11 minutes ago
Yes; the Radion was designed to work with the existing controllers that support EcoTech Marine products and the software to do so is currently in development.

So at least we know it really is "in the works" we just have to wait until they release it. At least if someone was "on the fence" about whether or not to buy one based on your ProfiLux investment you can rest pretty well (not 100% yet but close) knowing that the odds are in our favor now. At least Ecotech admits they are going to do this when just 2 weeks ago they pretty much were "hush hush" one way or the other.