As you probably already know Kessil, of horticulture LED fame offers a 36w LED pendant designed for reef aquarium lighting. The A150w as it's called is available in three color temperatures, only one of which is of interest to reef aquarists with a penchant for accurate color rendering and high-PUR outputs such as myself (spectrograph on the left).
The first advantage Kessil (and now a few other companies) offer is the single-die, multichip emitters. This form of LED lighting mimics halide style light spread and eliminates hotspots, blue/yellow shimmer lines, and non-uniform light distribution when using emitters of different spectral outputs. This form of LED lighting is also more efficient due to the low driving power of the individual emitters (as driving power goes up, luminous efficacy goes down). The main hurdle with this technology is the cooling: a large amount of heat is being produced in a very small area, and that thermal energy must be drawn away from the die efficiently so as not to harm the longevity of the chip.
To solve the above issues and produce a light with an improved spectral output, Kessil partnered with DiCon, a company that has placed a great deal of R&D into LED lighting, especially single-die, multichip emitters and associated cooling technologies. Using DiCon Dense Matrix LED™ emitters customized for their purposes, Kessil is one of the few aquarium LED lighting companies that is moving the technology forward, and can also easily manipulate the spectral output of their lamps (by changing the 'micro-emitters' on the lamp's die). Kudos to Kessil for producing something specifically for our hobby! I wonder if we'll see any more power options, lens options, or output options in the future?
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