LED T8 replacment bulbs

[Vegaman_Dan]

Looks like CREE is going to jump into the fluorescent tube replacement business. They already made a big impact in the LED screw in bulb replacments when they came out with $5-10 bulbs in a market where the average was $15-30 each. The market had to adjust pricing to a more realistic level to stay competitive.

http://www.cree.com/News-and-Events/Cree-News/Press-Releases/2014/May/T8-tube-release

Now they want to take a jab at T8 bulb replacements to fit in your existing fixtures. While they say no wiring changes are needed, I don't know how this works with the existing ballasts. What they do offer is full brightness (2100 lumens) at startup at any temp, so no more flickering or dark bulbs in colder temps.

50,000 hours lifespan.

At $30 per bulb, it's a bit pricey, but they will likely go down. They run 30% lower in power usage over fluorescent tubes. They'll be more impact resistant and less likely to become grenades if you break a tube.

They are DLC compliant, which means you could qualify for a rebate on your utility bill of $5-15 per lamp a month, so it could very easily pay for itself in a few months. This varies by your utility.

If they can get that tube price down to $10, I'd be willing to redo the lights in the garage to this tech.

 

[shooting4life]

Just too much money for me, maybe if I had a shop and was in it all week long as part of my employment, but just using the garage a few week nights and the weekend I could not justify the cost, especially when I would need 22 bulbs of $660 for my 18x24 garage.

 

[Nexussian]

Very cool.

I too expect the price will drop over time.

However, has anyone seen a LED replacement tube for 8' T12s or similar, each time I think I have found them, they turn out to be some sort of two prong tube (or 4' )?

Ideally, I would like the light output of a T8, without having to upgrade my fixtures, or as close to it as possible.

 

[ADSR]

I see it's only a 48". wonder what the 96" will cost?

 

[The mean fish]

One of the biggest benefits to going LED is to lose the ballast and their eventual failure rate. Most of the T8 LED tubes I deal with are simply 120V AC tubes so you remove the ballast and wire the tube adapters straight to AC power. It's quite simple and easy to do on most fixtures.

 

[The mean fish]

I've installed tons of the LA LED Challenger tubes in existing fixtures, I plan to eventually outfit my shop with the T8 4' HO tubes once the prices come down a little more.

http://www.laledus.com/lamps/challenger

 

[ADSR]

I've installed tons of the LA LED Challenger tubes in existing fixtures, I plan to eventually outfit my shop with the T8 4' HO tubes once the prices come down a little more.

http://www.laledus.com/lamps/challenger

No 96" there as well.

 

[92GreenYJ]

One of the biggest benefits to going LED is to lose the ballast and their eventual failure rate. Most of the T8 LED tubes I deal with are simply 120V AC tubes so you remove the ballast and wire the tube adapters straight to AC power. It's quite simple and easy to do on most fixtures.

This.

I've been upgrading some of the fluorescent lights in the marquees of some of the video games at work. (I manage an arcade) obviously our power consumption is pretty high so trying to slowly change over some stuff to led to cut costs. I just elimated the ballasts and wired straight to the tube prong clip thingies (technical term). Works like a charm and no more replacing ballasts and starters

 

[Eriehunter]

No 96" there as well.

http://www.eledlights.com/leds-by-a...ernatives/t8-8foot-led-tube.html#.U2fy2fldUo6

Not cheap but here they are.

 

[ADSR]

http://www.eledlights.com/leds-by-a...ernatives/t8-8foot-led-tube.html#.U2fy2fldUo6

Not cheap but here they are.

Holy! Yeah, i'll pass for now until the price comes down. My T8's are 59 watts and 8 bucks a piece.

 

[Eriehunter]

I was looking into those for my place, I need 24 of them to re do my shop. I talked to my sales man at the electrical supply house and we did the math on cost to run my current set up (8't12) it came to something like $0.88 per day to run.... the current payback on the change out was way too long so it didn't make sense. I can live with a little ballast noise. Shorter or no warm up time would be nice but it's not worth it.

 

[Falcon67]

I've priced "T8" replacement LED bulbs at $20/each. Great for the race trailer, not going to use it in the shop. I can buy a hellalot of T8 6500Ks for a couple of LEDs.

 

[ForceFed70]

Interesting!

Really don't think this will take off. Who wants to keep a useless ballast in the loop?

I'd like to see the numbers. They claim a 30% energy savings. If that is true it's a HUGE step forward as the best I've seen from any other manufacturer has been a an 11% savings and that was with a $350 dedicated fixture. To achieve 30% savings while still keeping the ballast is nothing short of an amazing leap forward.

 

[Mickster144]

I have a friend who owns a small shop and he replaced all of his florescent 48" lights with LEd's and he said for every fixture of 4, he only had to install two LED's and light coverage was better. I have CREE SL40 40" LED Surface Linear's in my garage, but I didn't do it for the savings, I just like the color and coverage that LED's put out.

 

[rlitman]

I have a friend who owns a small shop and he replaced all of his florescent 48" lights with LEd's and he said for every fixture of 4, he only had to install two LED's and light coverage was better.

That makes no sense. Lumens are lumens, and the LED are no brighter than the fluorescent tubes they are replacing.

As for pulling the ballast to send 120V to the tombstones, I'm not too comfortable with that. The tombstones are not rated for a 120V feed (yes, I know that the ballast output voltage is much higher, but it is also current limited), and making this sort of change will violate the UL listing of the device.
I can understand some Chinese **** product to provide instructions to do this, but cannot imagine a company like CREE would, so with their hands tied, working downstream of the ballast as a retro-fit seems like a nice turn-key solution for people adamant on keeping their 4' tubes.

As for me, my main shop lighting uses Edison Medium bases, supplied with 120V.

 

[Charles (in GA)]

I just elimated the ballasts and wired straight to the tube prong clip thingies (technical term).

Tombstones.

Charles

 

[kschauwe]

Hands on review:
http://www.designingwithleds.com/review-hands-cree-linear-led-t8-fluorescent-replacement-lamp/