# Heat panel vs ceramic ENERGY COSTS!!!



## retic666 (Jan 18, 2021)

As most of you probably know, I'm selling heat panels as kits so you can mount directly to your vivarium. I put these kits together in the mind they would be for larger vivariums, 6ft plus as I've been struggling for a long time with heat panels for larger vivs. So I took upon myself to come up with something as there was a serious gap in the market.

Anyhow, after getting a shocker of an electricity bill recently, I bought 2 energy monitors to see how much energy I was using on my vivs. All my vivs have been swapped out for my heat panels albeit one as I left the 500w ceramic in there so I could do this comparison.

I have run 2 vivs side by side. One with my 180w heat panels with my stat running ON/Off mode & one with a 500w ceramic trough heater with the stat running PULSE mode. These have been running exactly for 1 month now to the day & the results are impressive on my heat panels. The heat panels are using less than half the amount of energy compared to the ceramics!

Check out the results below.....


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## frogeyed (Nov 8, 2012)

retic666 said:


> As most of you probably know, I'm selling heat panels as kits so you can mount directly to your vivarium. I put these kits together in the mind they would be for larger vivariums, 6ft plus as I've been struggling for a long time with heat panels for larger vivs. So I took upon myself to come up with something as there was a serious gap in the market.
> 
> Anyhow, after getting a shocker of an electricity bill recently, I bought 2 energy monitors to see how much energy I was using on my vivs. All my vivs have been swapped out for my heat panels albeit one as I left the 500w ceramic in there so I could do this comparison.
> 
> ...


I don't think you can compare 180watt to a 500watt and expect any difference.The 500watt is 2.77 times more powerful than the 180watt.


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## retic666 (Jan 18, 2021)

frogeyed said:


> I don't think you can compare 180watt to a 500watt and expect any difference.The 500watt is 2.77 times more powerful than the 180watt.


Yes you can. The only time you can't compare a 500w is if it is running 100% all the time. My 500w is only running 10%, which is 50watts.

If you had a 150watt ceramic in a 8ft viv, it will be running 100% all the time to maintain heat. So it would be running 150watts flat out 24/7. It's always best to run bigger heat source than needed so your not pushing your thermostat to the limit & running it 100% all the time. Thermostats should never be running 100% 24/7.if they are, you need bigger heat source!


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## Malc (Oct 27, 2009)

You're comparing apples to oranges. Naturally the 500w heater will consume more power as it's rated at 2.7x more power than the panel. If you take the total consumption of the heat panel and multiplied that by 2.7 to give the equivalent power rating then you would have a figure of 52.11 Kw/h. Now it could be down to the difference in thermostat, or just that the ceramic is more efficient, but the panels are more or less about the same. You would need to do some real like for like experiment where both are controlled by the same type of stat and in identical set ups to get a true comparison


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## Malc (Oct 27, 2009)

retic666 said:


> Yes you can. The only time you can't compare a 500w is if it is running 100% all the time. My 500w is only running 10%, which is 50watts.
> 
> If you had a 150watt ceramic in a 8ft viv, it will be running 100% all the time to maintain heat. So it would be running 150watts flat out 24/7. It's always best to run bigger heat source than needed so your not pushing your thermostat to the limit & running it 100% all the time. Thermostats should never be running 100% 24/7.if they are, you need bigger heat source!


Russ, I hear hear what you are saying that a 150w ceramic would be driven almost constantly to reach temperature, where as a 500w would get there quicker, but they would probably still use the same amount of electricity. Lets make the math a tad easier by saying a 450w compared to a 150w. Say it took an hour for the 450w to reach 32c in a 8' viv, but the 150w took three hours.... Both have used 450w of electricity. 

Now where things might change would be in the running costs there after... as say for example both maintained that temperature with a pulse proportional stat that had a 50:50 on off ratio for the following hour. One viv would consume 75w, where the other 225w, so it would be cheaper in this scenario running the 150w heater. But in reality, it may struggle and be on for 75% or more of the time. But even if the 150w heater were on 100% of the time would be cheaper to run, assuming the case for the larger heater was the same in revers, where it only remained on for 25% of the time where it would have consumed 112w. In this fictitious example, the 150w ceramic would have to be on constantly, and the 450w ceramic on for 33% of time for it to balance out.

Naturally, if the 150w panel in this example was very efficient and could maintain 32c with a 1:3 ratio on a pulse stat it will out perform the 450w heater hands down and save you money.


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## retic666 (Jan 18, 2021)

Malc said:


> You would need to do some real like for like experiment where both are controlled by the same type of stat and in identical set ups to get a true comparison


This is an identical setup comparison. All vivs are 8x3x18 & all running istat thermostats. Heaters are in the exact same place & probe placements are the same in all the vivs.

Surely if you was to run say a 250w ceramic it would be running 20% all the time? The less powerful the heat source, the more the thermostat has to work to get it to & keep it at temp. The heat panels maintain heat better as they are a bigger surface area of heat & not consentrated like a ceramic. So therfore run alot less. The power usage is alot less compared to my old 500w ceramics, so is gonna save me money. That's the main thing surely?


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## frogeyed (Nov 8, 2012)

retic666 said:


> This is an identical setup comparison. All vivs are 8x3x18 & all running istat thermostats. Heaters are in the exact same place & probe placements are the same in all the vivs.
> 
> Surely if you was to run say a 250w ceramic it would be running 20% all the time? The less powerful the heat source, the more the thermostat has to work to get it to & keep it at temp. The heat panels maintain heat better as they are a bigger surface area of heat & not consentrated like a ceramic. So therfore run alot less. The power usage is alot less compared to my old 500w ceramics, so is gonna save me money. That's the main thing surely?
> View attachment 351826
> ...


I understand what you are saying, and I understand Malcs maths. If the stats are identical and the probe placement is identical, and the Viv's are insulated the same, the 500 watt will get to temperature quicker, but consume more power initially, the 180 will take longer to reach temperature, but consume less power for longer. However, if both stats are identical once the temperature is reached by both heat units, the power output to maintain that temperature should be pretty much identical. Difficult really - both arguments are logical. If over say one month of monitoring the 180 uses less, then long term it would be more efficient - I think ??


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## retic666 (Jan 18, 2021)

Cheers guys for your responses. They both make perfect sense & I understand what you are both saying. 

My vivs do maintain temps very well so they aren't constantly up n down temperature wise. Malc, you are right in what you say in the fact a 500w ceramic will get to temp alot quicker then say a 180w heat source (my panel) . This would certainly be the case if I wanted to heat the viv up from cold or someone was constantly opening the doors on their viv everyday, then the thermostat would be working overtime. 

Frogeyed.... This has been monitored over a month & I think these results look pretty good from a money saving point of view. As long as my elecy bill is cheaper than what it was when I was running all ceramics, I'm gonna be a happy boy 😊


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## Malc (Oct 27, 2009)

retic666 said:


> Surely if you was to run say a 250w ceramic it would be running 20% all the time? The less powerful the heat source, the more the thermostat has to work to get it to & keep it at temp.


I'm not 100% sure. There will be a limit where for a given volume of enclosure anything below a certain wattage heater won't be able to reach let alone maintain temperature as it's just too low powered. But say I had two enclosures where both heaters are capable of reaching and maintaining the target temperature, both controlled by a pulse proportional thermostat. Ideally the thermostat is designed to run at an equal 50:50 timing when maintaining the target temps, adjusting the mark/space ratio depending on if the temperature increases or drops slightly. So for sake of simplicity, both thermostats are running at 50:50 timing, so for a given hour both will be on for 30 minutes and off for 30 minutes. So in that hour the 500w rated heater would have consumed 250w of power, whilst the 180w will have used 90w.

So in this example, all it confirms is that your 180w panel is cheaper to run than a 500w ceramic, which is clearly obvious as one is 2.7x the power of the other. Where your 180w panel scores over the CHE, including the trough type is that they have a larger surface area and thus make it's ideal for large enclosures. They will be cheaper to run (you'll never work out exactly as there will be variations between the two), and at the end of the year I'm estimating you will probably half the 'leccy bill for the snake.

Now all you need to do is get one that's around 300mm x 450mm and rated around 60w and I think you'll make a killing. Just think of all those 36" x 15" x 15" vivs that are too low for a standard ceramic mushroom heater. With such a heater these people would have the ideal solution. I will have to dig out my old Ultratherm heat panel and show you an image. It's on 50w but is ample in a 4' viv as it's so efficient. Just need to sort out some form of reflector to prevent the back heat (originally had 4mm thick fibre glass mat is sandwiched between the panel and the roof of the viv), and a suitable guard.... otherwise it would be in use in one of the vivs.


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