mh lighting cost ?

i was wanting to put mh system on my tank. 3 250w mh and 4 96w pc.
can anyone tell me how much my bill would go up or om much a month it might run ?
i live in ohio
thanks

 

You're talking about putting 1100 watts of lighting on your tank.....I hope it's about 500 gallons lol

 

no that the right amount for a 125 reef tank

 

that might be a little overkill imo. maybe 2 250w and suppliment with t5's

 

here in Ca.We have 2-150 HQi's and it's extra $100 bucks a month. Total $250 a month!

 

I have 4 250w MH running on my 135g with 8 actenic bulbs. I am not sure the actual amount it went up as a result of that but my electric bill went up by at least 25% month, more in the summer because I have to run air a little more because of the lights

 

heres the math:
look at your bill and find how much they charge you per kilowatt, then take how many watts you want to consume and then multiply to find the daily and the monthly and hte yearly cost.

There are also online calculators if you would rather be lazy: energy consumption calculator - Bing

 

4 250mh i guess you want to make sure you cover all areas of the tank. i dont see why the other guys say use 2mh instead of three your sopposed to have one for every 2 foot of tank lenth. maybe the thought the tnak wasnt 6 foot long.
thant why the sell the 72" 3x mh fixtures. ?

 

Ahhhhh im thinking 4 foot tank. but thats still alot for the watts/gallon

 

Ok, first, it sounds like you have a good amount light, especially if you have 6" long tank. It's actually refreshing to see somebody who is aware of lighting requirements and not trying to get by with a bare minimum. As to cost, no one except somebody who lives in your area can tell you that. It really depends on how much a Kw/H costs you and if you have any step type billing. To aid you in calculating how many Kw/hr you will be using, with the MH, I would add an additional 15% wattage. Example, you are planning on using 750w of MH I would add at least another 100 or so watts for inefficiency, more if you have a magnetic ballast. For the PC maybe 10%. So your total wattage for calculating cost should be around 1200w per hour, which is 1.2 Kw/hr. Figure out how long you want to have the MHs on and the PCs on then multiple by 1.2. That should give you the total number of Kw/Hrs, finally multiple that number by how much you pay per Kw/Hr.

BTW, I got those percentages from Killowatt data from various MH setups. It's not 100% accurate obviously, but should give you a good idea of the actual watts you will be using.