Looking good RSS! How hot do those LEDs get when running? I'm thinking about possibly getting some for my setup. They sound like the use very little power. About how much does each cost?
At the current power levels I'm running them at I can hold on to the heatsinks and they are just slightly warmer than room temp, nothing I would ever worry about. I believe a single T5 produces more heat than all 28 of those LEDs at the current power level but I have no way of testing this. Now understand if I turn the power up 60%+ the story changes completely. At max power holding the heatsink would cause burns.
I've been getting the solderless kits from
http://www.rapidled.com/ and the heatsinks from
http://www.heatsinkusa.com/.
If I was to build another rack I would use the moonlight kits
http://www.rapidled.com/4-led-solderless-moonlight-kit/ instead of the larger kits. Per LED it cheaper and a little easier to assemble. The downside would be 4 LEDs per wall plug. The 4 LED moonlight kit is $23 + 4 lenses @ $1.25 each they come out to $5.6 an LED. The 24 LED dimmable kit is $180 which is $7.5 an LED. You would still need a dimmer for this kit. My belief is that the moonlight kits spaced 4-5" per LED would be the light level I'm after. I want good reds/purples but not the deep reds/purples that start looking black. If you order the moonlight kits make sure and add in the comments block to replace the blue LEDs with the ones you want.
Don't forget to figure in the cost of the heatsinks.
Keep in mind LEDs are spotlights and plan accordingly.
So far I'm been really impressed with the moonlight kits, here are some threads with photos from those kits. I've only been playing with LEDs for a few months so keep that in mind.
http://www.terraforums.com/forums/s...le-Short-Term-LED-Experiment-with-a-few-Cephs
http://www.terraforums.com/forums/showthread.php/135849-LED-Growlights
The next area I'm setting up will be using 4 of the 4 LED moonlight kits spaced at 4.5" lighting a 36" X 18" area I believe this will be about 3 T5s worth of light. Here are my estimated costs so far.
2 X 36" 1.813 Heatsink = $47.52 + $22.01 (S/H) = $69.53
4 X 4 LED Moonlight kits @ $23 + 16 XP-G 80 degree lensex @ 16*1.25 = $135 + $7 (S/H) = $142
Comes out to $13.22 per LED. I'll be ordering more pieces so I'll end up with less shipping costs in the end and more package deals but there is a general cost.
They are expensive short term but cheap long term. This new build would use a max of 24W of power, my belief of 3 T5s providing similar lighting would use 150W of power. (No long term testing to compare the two and just my short term subjective conclusions) Assuming this is correct or close to correct and I run these 14 hours a day all year I end up with under 125KWhrs for the 16 LEDs and under 775KWhrs for the T5s, for my area that converts to around $14.25 a year to run the LEDs and $88.35 for the T5s. Now you can buy a 4 bulb T5 fixture for around $60-100. Assuming I pay $80 and ignore bulb costs for the T5s and only run 3 of the 4 lights. KWhr costs of $.114 in my area last year.
All this information is basically to work out the break even point, when you start saving money using LEDs. For me using these two examples it would be 1 year 9 months 2 weeks, at this point if I went the T5 route I've paid my electric company the "extra" setup costs of the LEDs and am now just paying them $74.10 extra a year for the life of the LEDs. Once the LEDs burn out its likely I will need to replace the entire system as they will have been replaced with the next new lighting type and finding the proper LED would be difficult or impractical.
I think people are under estimating the costs of running T5s and there is just too little good information about LEDs out there for people to run off the cliff and write that check.
The two big factors to keep in mind also, T5 generate a lot more directed heat (can be a good thing) and LED are spotlights (good and bad imo)