Is It Time To Switch To 4 Foot LEDs Yet?

I suspect that there have been some posts on this already, but when I did searches here I didn't get quite what I wanted. I have a number of twin bulb four foot fluorescent fixtures around my place. I gather that some of my choices are as follows:


-Do nothing. Keep them fluorescent.

-Replace them with LEDs that work with fixtures having a ballast.

-Replace them with regular LED tubes and bypass the ballast.

-Buy new fixtures that use LED tubes.


So far, I have chosen to do nothing because it seems a bit too expensive to switch. It seems like the price has come down quite a bit and there is a place online that has tubes for about $8.00 each. Anyway, what is the general consensus here on this. Is it time to switch yet or are most people still waiting for the prices to come down a bit more? Also, is the preferred method to bypass the ballast in existing fixtures or are bulbs that work with legacy fixtures a good choice?

What about the economics of savings on energy use? It looks to me like the savings from incandescent to LED is more noticeable than the savings from fluorescent to LED? It that accurate or am I way off base here?

I will also check with my power company to see what sort of rebate program they have for these.

Right now, I am inclined to use up the fluorescent tubes that I have, but vow to not buy any more of them. Then, as they need replacement, bypass the ballast in the existing fixtures and swap them out with LED tubes. With any luck, they will be less than $8.00 per tube by that time!

The decision to upgrade is complicated, based on a lot of factors. The simple answer is that it will only pay to upgrade if the new fixtures/tubes are significantly more efficient than what you have now. Once you consider quality of light and fixture cost per lumen it gets more complicated. If you have good working T8 fixtures now, it may not be worth it to upgrade tubes or fixtures yet.

If you are adding a new fixture, there are some LED fixtures in the market place that produce 90-100+ lumens per watt at 85+ CRI that are worth considering. Even the ones available at Home Depot are twice the cost of an equivalent T8 fixture, so the energy savings will take a very long time to pay off, the major savings coming from avoiding the labor costs on re-lamping the T8 fixtures,... no re-lamping LEDs. If the drivers and LEDs will last long enough to have been worth installing remains to be seen.

At my office we installed LED tubes in our 30 year old T8 fixtures. We opted to use the ones where we removed the ballast from the original fixture....which drove the change. We started having issues with the T8 bulbs lighting, so rather than install new bulbs and ballasts...we removed the ballasts and installed the LED tubes. We are extremely happy with the outcome. Subjectively, the LEDs are brighter and within my preferred color range (4500k). We did it about 6 months ago, the LED tubes were around $15-20 each.

Doing it at home, I'd be happy to do it the same way.

I hope that helps a bit.

kingofwylietx said:

.....Doing it at home, I'd be happy to do it the same way.

I hope that helps a bit.

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That does help. Thank you very much for the reply.

At home, "the plan" is to swap out my four foot fluoresents in the shop as they go bad. I bought some LED conversions from Amazon, these:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DY2N19S/?tag=cpf0b6-20

I think they were around 17 bucks in 2015, look to be around $19 at present. I see they will operate between 85 volts and 240 volts. I guess if I was ambitious I could wire my shop lights 240V.

I went with the conversion where you throw away the ballast and wire straight 120V to the "tombstones" at the ends of the fixture.

Costco had some of the conversions that leave the ballast in, but that seems silly to me. I did buy a couple of their complete shop lights that have two LED tubes instead of fluorescents, along with cord, plug and pull chain switch. I want to add a few more lights to the shop.

I'm happy with the four foot LEDs. They are bright, and the come on quickly at temperatures where the fluorescents are not happy.

Now I'm trying to effect similar changes at work (hydroelectric powerhouse). It's an old plant, originally all incandescent, many locations swapped to four-tube F40T12 fluorescents some years ago (they recently changed ballasts and swapped a bunch of those to T8's, knowing full well that better options exist). High bay lights are mostly mercury vapor, and we have some sodium light around. This is a very PC municipal utility, and they want to keep up their "greenest utility" claims. They've been pushing LED street lights in the city, where it gets them brownie points. I'm hoping that soon we'll see a whole lot of high quality LEDs here.

In short, I think the swap from four foot fluorescents to four foot LEDs is a good idea. If you have a bunch of those lights in your shop or house, you don't have to do them all at once. Maybe just do a few every other payday.

I took a quick look at home depot the other day and saw the LED "tubes" and looking at the lumen specs either I'm missing something or the output is considerably lower in lumens than T8 tubes are. If the output was the same or greater with higher efficiency I would say go for it but I'm not seeing a considerably better lumens/watt with LEDs maybe it is better to wait a few more years before swapping out those fluorescents.

I'm missing something or the output is considerably lower in lumens than T8 tubes are.

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That is correct. The trick is that the LED tubes aren't emitting backwards toward a reflector. All of the tube's light is mostly in one direction, so you don't lose energy that way. They should be just as bright if not brighter than the comparable FL tube.

FWIW, I probably wouldn't bother replacing FL tubes with LED unless:
-It was in a difficult to service area
-Environmental conditions (such as extreme cold) make the lights perform poorly
-The fixture was going to be replaced or overhauled anyway
-The lights are cycled frequently

It will take many many years to make the money back on energy savings from LED tubes, so that by itself probably isn't worth it.

I was thinking about trying out the Cree 4' High Output T8s for it's 5 point bump in CRI vs our current Philips fluorescent T8s in our kitchen, just to see if it matters enough to bother anywhere else in our house. Energy savings isn't a huge deal and light output just needs to be in the ballpark of our current fluorescent tubes, plus or minus. ROI isn't really a major concern either since we have two dozen PV panels on our roof, so basically it's just curiosity about how 90+ CRI LED bulbs look compared to 85 CRI fluorescent.

Bad idea? Cree fixed that fairly recent problem they had with their ballast-compatible T8s, yes?

I'm torn on T8 retrofits from my perspective as a volunteer facility manager.

Ballast-dependent tubes are cheaper - probably because they're simpler to install, thus demand and volume have driven down their prices despite the increased complexity.

However, direct-AC are more attractive to me as I deal with the realities of perhaps 200 fixtures at the Dallas Makerspace with 20+ year old magnetic ballasts failing. While driving a LED tube that likely cheats the startup cycle and minimizes stress on the ballast, a dying ballast is still dying ... and most of the LED tubes seem to demand an electronic ballast.

If anyone has a line on some 5000K-4000K direct-AC tubes that are well-reviewed for around $10 each (or less), I might experiment with a few fixtures since rewiring tombstones looks to be less labor-intensive than a ballast swap. If we owned the space it would be an easy choice - fewer tube swaps on ancient fixtures prolongs their life since it technically requires an electrician to swap a fixture and they don't work for cheap.

Duplicate

Since my last post in this thread, I've found a local supplier that sells LED tubes that can run via direct AC (or electronic ballast) for <$13 each. The cost modelling is also quite compelling - sub 9 month payback vs T8s; sub 6 month payback vs T12s. All of this is with fairly cheap commercial electricity as well. We'll pilot some fixtures for a few months and it it goes well will start to invest the upfront cash to save money on the back end.

idleprocess said:

Since my last post in this thread, I've found a local supplier that sells LED tubes that can run via direct AC (or electronic ballast) for <$13 each. The cost modelling is also quite compelling - sub 9 month payback vs T8s; sub 6 month payback vs T12s. All of this is with fairly cheap commercial electricity as well. We'll pilot some fixtures for a few months and it it goes well will start to invest the upfront cash to save money on the back end.

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I think for myself $10 a tube would probably be my breaking point of where I would consider replacing burned out fluorescent tubes with LED ones. I know I've been thinking about it mostly due to a have 1 4 foot T12 fixture that lights up part of the garage and in the cold part of winter it struggles to brighten up fully. I think at $20 to retrofit an old T12 fixture vs buying a newer T5 or T8 fixture vs buying a native LED fixture the retrofit to me is attractive the rest isn't as I don't spend a lot of time in the garage working mostly in and out doing laundry and grabbing the mower and lawn tools. I'm less concerned with saving money on electricity over fluorescent lights as I probably don't run the lights more than 10 hours a month or so I'm guessing.
$13 each makes close to $30 when you include sales tax which is I think too close to the price of a new T8 fixture with tubes.

Lynx_Arc said:

I think for myself $10 a tube would probably be my breaking point of where I would consider replacing burned out fluorescent tubes with LED ones. I know I've been thinking about it mostly due to a have 1 4 foot T12 fixture that lights up part of the garage and in the cold part of winter it struggles to brighten up fully. I think at $20 to retrofit an old T12 fixture vs buying a newer T5 or T8 fixture vs buying a native LED fixture the retrofit to me is attractive the rest isn't as I don't spend a lot of time in the garage working mostly in and out doing laundry and grabbing the mower and lawn tools. I'm less concerned with saving money on electricity over fluorescent lights as I probably don't run the lights more than 10 hours a month or so I'm guessing.
$13 each makes close to $30 when you include sales tax which is I think too close to the price of a new T8 fixture with tubes.

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Our considerations are going to be different from the average homeowner. We have ~250 fixtures - no small percentage of which run 24x7 - consuming a sizeable percentage of our significant electrical bill every month. We're specifically interested in retrofits because we can do those ourselves. New fixtures - while doubtlessly superior goods - would require a licensed and bonded electrician per our insurance, which would probably cost a multiple of what the retrofits cost us. As a non-profit we also don't pay sales taxes, but the cost of acquisition for most solutions is very small relative to the operating costs over the span of months and years.

idleprocess said:

Our considerations are going to be different from the average homeowner. We have ~250 fixtures - no small percentage of which run 24x7 - consuming a sizeable percentage of our significant electrical bill every month. We're specifically interested in retrofits because we can do those ourselves. New fixtures - while doubtlessly superior goods - would require a licensed and bonded electrician per our insurance, which would probably cost a multiple of what the retrofits cost us. As a non-profit we also don't pay sales taxes, but the cost of acquisition for most solutions is very small relative to the operating costs over the span of months and years.

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I can see that you would pay for them within the first year with energy savings if you run them 14 hours and save a penny a day per fixture in 6 years you pay for the upgrade and 6 more years and you pay for another upgrade but I suspect you may save more than that per day.

I am not sure if anyone has noticed, but most large Asian supermarkets have converted over to LED.

I'm not sure what this is about, but Asians are known to be very tight with their money and would not be buying these if they did not think it was going to be saving them money. It's possible there is a supplier in China who is directly marketing these overseas to the Asian community.

A 4-foot LED would never fit in any of my hosts.

:laughing:

Carry on

JoakimFlorence said:

I am not sure if anyone has noticed, but most large Asian supermarkets have converted over to LED.

I'm not sure what this is about, but Asians are known to be very tight with their money and would not be buying these if they did not think it was going to be saving them money. It's possible there is a supplier in China who is directly marketing these overseas to the Asian community.

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One other thing to consider is the price of electricity it may cost 2-3 times as much per kwh there such that they can more quickly recoup the cost of the upgrade instead of taking 10-20 years at 10-15 cents per kwh it could be 3-4 years at 35 cents per kwh

Lynx_Arc said:

One other thing to consider is the price of electricity it may cost 2-3 times as much per kwh there such that they can more quickly recoup the cost of the upgrade instead of taking 10-20 years at 10-15 cents per kwh it could be 3-4 years at 35 cents per kwh

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The payoff is so much faster than that for continuous operation. Assumption is the semi-standard 48" linear quad-fixture.

T8 Floro: $3 cost (x4), 32W, 95% efficient ballast. Over a 730.5 hour month it will consume 98.42 kWH costing $7.87 @ $0.08 / kWH

LED Tube: $12.63 cost (x4), 18W, no ballast. Over a 730.5 hour month it will consume 52.60 kWH costing $4.21 @ $0.08 / kWH.

In 8 months and 100% utilization, the superior efficiency of the LED tubes have cleared their greater CAPEX and the organization has saved $3.44 in TCO. At 12, 24, and 36 months the savings are $17.93, $61.37, and $116.82 respectively (note that floros are expected to have been re-lamped at month 33; less than half the projected lifespan for the LED tubes). At projected end-of-life for the LED tubes at month 68, the spread will have reached $257.67 for an average savings of $45.47 a year.

Altering the duty cycle to 50% stretches the payoff times appreciably. Break-even is at 18 months. LED tubes' end-of-life isn't until 136 months, at which point the spread is $239.67 for an annual savings of $21.15.

25% duty cycle stretches break-even to 34 months. End-of-life for the LED tubes is an incredulous 22 years 9 months. The labor savings and reliability is about the only argument at this level of utilization.



Obviously, this is all back-of-the-napkin. The LED tubes could fail after <10,000 hours, dim to marginal levels of output in a few short months, consume more than 18 watts, fail to deliver enough light, exhibit gruesome light quality, flicker horribly, not handle enclosed fixtures well, or exhibit other undesirable traits. This is why we're going to test them before deploying in quantity.

idleprocess said:

The payoff is so much faster than that for continuous operation. Assumption is the semi-standard 48" linear quad-fixture.

T8 Floro: $3 cost (x4), 32W, 95% efficient ballast. Over a 730.5 hour month it will consume 98.42 kWH costing $7.87 @ $0.08 / kWH

LED Tube: $12.63 cost (x4), 18W, no ballast. Over a 730.5 hour month it will consume 52.60 kWH costing $4.21 @ $0.08 / kWH.

In 8 months and 100% utilization, the superior efficiency of the LED tubes have cleared their greater CAPEX and the organization has saved $3.44 in TCO. At 12, 24, and 36 months the savings are $17.93, $61.37, and $116.82 respectively (note that floros are expected to have been re-lamped at month 33; less than half the projected lifespan for the LED tubes). At projected end-of-life for the LED tubes at month 68, the spread will have reached $257.67 for an average savings of $45.47 a year.

Altering the duty cycle to 50% stretches the payoff times appreciably. Break-even is at 18 months. LED tubes' end-of-life isn't until 136 months, at which point the spread is $239.67 for an annual savings of $21.15.

25% duty cycle stretches break-even to 34 months. End-of-life for the LED tubes is an incredulous 22 years 9 months. The labor savings and reliability is about the only argument at this level of utilization.



Obviously, this is all back-of-the-napkin. The LED tubes could fail after <10,000 hours, dim to marginal levels of output in a few short months, consume more than 18 watts, fail to deliver enough light, exhibit gruesome light quality, flicker horribly, not handle enclosed fixtures well, or exhibit other undesirable traits. This is why we're going to test them before deploying in quantity.

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I could see that, that is the cost savings in the long run if you use them continuously. I think my issue is reliability and declining output of LED "tubes" vs fluorescent ones. If you had actual stats of those factors in use and not suggested laboratory type estimates of prototypes and not those which are sold to the public then it would help one choose. If you take your figures and multiply it by lets say 3 for length of savings you are looking at around 3 years to break even if you consider the $3.44 figure negligible and written off as "labor" and transportation costs. If you only had a 2 tube fixture then your savings would be less but time would be the same. Personally for me as little as I use them perhaps 20 hours a month in my garage 1 fixture of 2 tubes and another fixture about 10 hours a month the same so 30 hours of 2 tubes lets just say 3 days a month to be safe and that is about 1/10 the hours and using your figures instead of 8 months to save $3 if would take 6 years or so. I'm not trusting LEDs and electronics to hold up that long for that price to save $3 that is only 50 cents a year IMO not really worth the hassle. If the savings were $3 a year it still isn't worth it to me to risk failure and lose $30 and find myself having to revert back to fluorescent again or buy a new fixture on top of it all.
I also am a little curious do these new "tubes" use smd LEDs (like 2835, 5050, etc.) I know they don't use 5mm but they could use emitters like the XP series from Cree which I don't consider quite the same category as smd (for performance, efficiency, and longevity). I'm seeing more and more COB and smd LEDs and although I know they are superior to 5mm type (10mm, 3mm) plastic encapsulated LEDs I'm not familiar with their longevity and find that some devices with them in them run rather hot to the touch.

Installed a pilot fixture at Dallas Maker Space with LED tubes. I'm impressed that was used to be a marginal-at-best product genre has so quickly transformed into a solid value proposition.

The tube itself has decent build quality with a rigid aluminum extrusion on the backside. The pins seem slightly stronger than the pins on T8 lamps. The built-in diffusing lens isn't really necessary in our application (inside a fairly standard diffused troffer fixture), but that option would be handy for exposed fixtures.

Electrically, these tubes are quite versatile. They can be driven by a wide variety of electronic ballasts or run on mains power. We're replacing magnetic T12 ballasts, so we have to run them from direct AC. When running on mains power, the manufacturer gave users the option of wiring one end or both ends; this requires the use of "non-shunted" tombstones regardless of which wiring option one selects (lest hot be shorted to neutral). In the interest of slightly improved safety, I opted to power both ends.

In use, they're all but indistinguishable from florescent lamps. Claimed CRI is >80, which is on par with middling florescent tubes. I could not detect any flicker with my smartphone camera. Subjectively, they seem brighter than an adjacent T8 / 5000K fixture that was refit but a year ago.

We're going to see how these work for a few weeks. Barring any complaints or performance issues, we'll stock these units rather than T8 ballasts and tubes for our T12 fixture servicing.