Philips Coral Care Gen 2 Coming to U.S

[Dr. Dendrostein]

I'm going to show my age. GE, Sylvania, Phillips. These were the big players in reef lighting circa 1980s,in the US. I would go through a very thick book call Grainger, and it would have most of your lighting and fluorescent, very high output, high output, vapor bulbs, metal halide bulbs, Mercury bulbs, you get the picture. This book would have your specs for each type of bulb. Kelvins, what type of base, mogul, t27, t12, etc...That's how high tech , the 80's was. We only used Kelvin ratings to determine best spectrum for our corals. ...Hahaha

Phillips is getting back into the game of aquarium lighting, here in the states. Does anyone have any info on these lighting systems very well known in Europe they say.

 

[Gareth elliott]

In the uk the original version costs £547 so would expect to cost at least $700-$800 after shipping and taxes are taken in. Just guessing though.

 

[Bpb]

I mean....they APPEAR more attractive than previous units which sported their commercial high bay housing just with different diodes (easy entry, no retooling costs before). But I am still concerned with no active cooling. If heat is the biggest killer of diodes it really seems like you’d want a breeze on that heat sink

 

[alton]

If they are finally bringing it to America I would hope they would be assembled in their San Marcos Tx. Plant, cutting out most of the import taxes?

 

[Helfish]

Here is some more information

 

[oreo54]

I mean....they APPEAR more attractive than previous units which sported their commercial high bay housing just with different diodes (easy entry, no retooling costs before). But I am still concerned with no active cooling. If heat is the biggest killer of diodes it really seems like you’d want a breeze on that heat sink

Well, they know their diodes..
Anyways a bit more:

Interestingly the new CoralCare Gen 2 has fewer LEDs and less power than the original; the light emission is provided by 68 LEDs compared to 104 before, divided into six clusters producing up to 170 watts of light, twenty watts less than before.

Philips Coral Care Gen 2 Coming to U.S. Next Year | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

The Philips CoralCare Gen 2 LED fixture is an exciting new follow-up to an aquarium light that has so far not really ventured far outside of Europe. Built with, let’s call it European Sensibility’…

reefbuilders.com

 

[EMeyer]

It makes no sense to me that we protect 90$ lights with fans but not 800$ lights. Never understood high end leds with no fans.

 

[oreo54]

It makes no sense to me that we protect 90$ lights with fans but not 800$ lights. Never understood high end leds with no fans.

They aren't needed.. Better design..hopefully..

Fans are the easy way out..

then some people.. like me.. hate added parts such as fans..

 

[EMeyer]

They aren't needed.. Better design..hopefully..

Fans are the easy way out..

then some people.. like me.. hate added parts such as fans..

I'm not an LED expert, I know you have a lot of knowledge in this area. Maybe you can explain this.

As I understand it, heat is bad for LEDs, reducing their lifetime and damaging components. Are higher end LEDs themselves actually less heat sensitive? Are the heat sinks somehow so much better they achieve the same temperatures without fans? Would fans not make them even cooler?

Fans just seem like a fundamentally useful thing in electronics. I get why we avoid them in tiny things like smartphones, but theres plenty of room for a fan in an aquarium light.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

I'm not an LED expert, I know you have a lot of knowledge in this area. Maybe you can explain this.

As I understand it, heat is bad for LEDs, reducing their lifetime and damaging components. Are higher end LEDs themselves actually less heat sensitive? Are the heat sinks somehow so much better they achieve the same temperatures without fans? Would fans not make them even cooler?

Fans just seem like a fundamentally useful thing in electronics. I get why we avoid them in tiny things like smartphones, but theres plenty of room for a fan in an aquarium light.

Some more experienced than me will chime in but it's not so much about heat sensitivity per se, but more about efficiency and power use. More efficient LED means less power wasted via heat production, which will dictate heat dissipation and thus life cycle of LED. Heathisnk design and materials also have an impact on cooling efficiency, especially when run passive.

 

[oreo54]

I'm not an LED expert, I know you have a lot of knowledge in this area. Maybe you can explain this.

As I understand it, heat is bad for LEDs, reducing their lifetime and damaging components. Are higher end LEDs themselves actually less heat sensitive? Are the heat sinks somehow so much better they achieve the same temperatures without fans? Would fans not make them even cooler?

Fans just seem like a fundamentally useful thing in electronics. I get why we avoid them in tiny things like smartphones, but theres plenty of room for a fan in an aquarium light.

Everything is sort of a balance.

To start , yes modern "state of the art" diodes are a lot less susceptible to heat than cheap 10/$ 1 variety..
Modern diodes also have increased efficiency so less energy is converted to heat to begin with..

Where this sort of breaks down is LED's increase efficiency as they decrease their temp.

2 ways to do that: 1) less current 2) cooling via large heatsinks or fans..or refrigerated units (extreme)

The Black boxes run like 120W (in reality) w/ paper thin heatsinks but large fans..
Orig Philips had a MASSIVE hunk of aluminum to cool w/out fans.
Their engineers determine what they can get away with in terms of heat/current/lifespan ..
I'm not going to second guess them. Thermaldynamics is complicated here.

There would really be nothing stopping one from adding a small cheap fan to the top of the new one though.
It would increase efficiency to a certain degree as would running them in a 50F room..

Very cold LED's have an almost infinite lifespan.. pretty sure Philips was shooting for around 10 plus years..
I'd worry more about power supplies/drivers than the diodes.

An odd sort of corollary is T5's run best at a certain temp yet few question why every fixture doesn't have a temp controlled fan..

Well, maybe not the best example..

 

[Kyl]

Cooling capacity is much more involved than simply throwing a fan on something. Heat sink design can be as simple as piece of metal, or use of other heat-transfer methodology. Phillips has a major background in fixture design for installs that won't be user serviced for periods of years. Fans can break down or have reduced performance prematurely by getting dirty, and if you have a fixture say in the roof of a large arena or warehouse, no one is just grabbing a ladder and fixing that, it would require a partial shut-down potentially, equipment brought in, etc.

 

[alton]

Philips makes Led lighting for the Commercial and Industrial markets. The two High Schools we have going with them now contain about 8, 000 LED fixtures on each and all carry a 10 year warranty. Not one year and none contain fans. Can't imagine maintaining 8,000+ fans?

 

[shred5]

It makes no sense to me that we protect 90$ lights with fans but not 800$ lights. Never understood high end leds with no fans.

I work in the lighting industry and none of the fixtures we specify have fans.
If they are built right they do not need them. It is just one more thing that can fail and you can't have that.

 

[sde1500]

Here is some more information

For the masses, I feel I should say stick with it past the interviewer's intro, it switches to English. Or at least, most of it is...

Looking forward to seeing how this light performs. Can't say I'm interested in switching, but as any reefer I have longer term plans to size up my tank which would involve more lighting. So naturally I am interested in following the advances in the field. As for heat, heatsinks can work very well. I'd rather have a light without a fan, just one less moving part that can fail.

 

[Silver14SS]

I work in the lighting industry and none of the fixtures we specify have fans.
If they are built right they do not need them. It is just one more thing that can fail and you can't have that.

If given a choice between a sealed unit with passive cooling and a unit with active cooling, I know which one I'm choosing assuming all else is comparable. No fans to replace, no noise, no dust bunnies in the fixture, maybe even a water resistance rating

 

[Kyl]

I work in the lighting industry and none of the fixtures we specify have fans.
If they are built right they do not need them. It is just one more thing that can fail and you can't have that.

I could only imagine our arena guys laughing at me if I suggested they use an actively cooled fixture.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Thanks for info, comrades

 

[Kyl]

Another video, in French, shows some of the early app interface:

and some other tidbits. Obviously the NA market will have it's own thing, but there is some answers to questions.

 

[NeverlosT]

I think you are good on LED life... 18 years of hobbyist use...: (from Danireef, review and details of the Version 2 Gen 1 Coralcare)

"Philips guarantees a long lasting duration for its ceiling light. In fact the Led (of 3 or 5 watts) are powered by a very low current in order to reach over 25.000 hours of work. The specs says that if used in a place with temperatures under 35 degrees, at the 100% of their power, the 90% of the ceiling lights, after 25.000 hours, would still have the 80% of their original power. Every change in those conditions will increase or decrease their duration. The average use of my ceiling light, for example, is of 12 hours, but never at their maximum power. It should be equal to a use of 4 hours a day at their 100%. This would be about 6.249 days of use, almost 18 years. An considering that in my house will never be 35 degrees we could stop worry about the light for a really long time. Also because in that very moment we’ll still have the 80% of power available."

This is for the Gen 1 V2, but it gives you an idea of what they are up to, so dont sweat the no-fan.

Link to article.