4 foot LED "shop" lighting

[russellseaton1]

Well.... Yes and No. My electric bill last month was $36.55. I think it averages about that year round. Higher in the winter months and lower in the summer months due to lighting mainly. A 50% reduction would mean $18 per month for me. Yearly that would be $216. A nice amount. You could buy a new battery drill maybe. For me the main lights I use are the bathroom, kitchen (old light style), and living room (LED bulbs). Unfortunately the basement shop with the fluorescent wasteful lights are not used all that much each month. So they add $1 to the total bill. Or less. LED would save me 50 cents a month at most. It would take decades and decades to pay for LED in the basement. But if I replaced my kitchen and bathroom light bulbs with LED for $20-30-40, I could pay for them in three months or so. Savings, or reduction in power in this case, is important in the right circumstances. And unimportant in other places. The person who started this thread said he ran his new LED light in the storage room a total of 5 hours in one year. Paying more than double the cost of the cheapo unit (his words) to save 50% power consumption might not make much sense if you only save 10 cents of power each year. Spend money or use technology where it matters. Not where its foolish to do so.

[Clare Snyder]

When the ballasts start to fail you will see where replacing flourescents doesn't make sense. ANd a 4 foot T5 is optimistically 2900 lumens - nowhere close to

5000. Half that light goes up, requiring a reflector to direct it back down while a good led light focusses ALL of it's 2000 lumens down where it does you the most good. I've found replacing 4 tube luminaires with 2 "tube" LEDs gives better visability.

[krw]

You're assuming that 100% of your power bill is lighting. That would be quite unusual.

[krw]

There are some that go both ways (ballast/replacement and bypass/120V).

[Clare Snyder]

At the hangar we had all kinds of 2 and 4 tube flourescents - and the ballasts were starting to fail pretty regularly. We used up all the spare ballasts we had and most were still T12 - with the remainder T8. Cheap replacement fixtures cost less than replacement ballasts up here in Canada - and T8 bulbs retail are 11.99 per pair at Canadian Tire or Home Despot - regular quick start ballasts are $35 - and single led units can be bought for around $20 while led replacement "tubes" run about $9 each on sale.. We pulled all the flourescents and replaced them with LED units. Using the same number of "tubes", more evenly distributed, the hangar is MUCH brighter - and the cost was less than replacing ballasts and re-tubing,t12 4 footers are $10.98 Canadian per pair at Home Despot and T12 ballasts are $24.59 each. Upgrading to T8 the ballast are $36, plus or minus a dime or two, the tubes $8 each, plus or minus a dime, whether bought sigly or in six packs at the local Home Despot. At my local wholesaler I can likely get them for about a quarter of a dollar less - mabybe a buck less in full case lots.

2 light Feit LED units are within a dime of $60. He picked up a whole carload (Can't remember the brand)(his Sonata) on sale for $19? each

Now the good part - at the Hangar the cost of electricty is a certain amount up to a certain amount of power per month - and it goes up SIGNIFICANTLY if you go over - and not just for the overage, but for the full consumption. Relamping the hangar reduced consumption by 50% overall - and lighting is not the ONLY power usage. He can use the welder judiciously now without jumping to the higher power rate. Turns out it was a double or triple win - less power, less cost than re-ballasting and re-tubing, and more light

[Clare Snyder]

Things are obviously cheaper south of the border - and the prices I quotes are less the 13% tax - - - which you can get back if it is for certain business uses.

[Clare Snyder]

My experience with the "low mercury" flourescents has been DISMAL. The Alto tubes with the green ends were a real crapshoot - about half failed in under 200 hours - about half of them significantly less. Half or more of the remaining lasted over 5000 (about 2700 hours per year, more or less - lasting more than 2 years) A LED tube should AVERAGE 10,000 hours or more (I haven't had any fail in over 2 years other than one small batch that were DOA.(and returned for full credit - an advantage of dealing locally)

[Bob D]

Sorry, I wrote the wrong information. My bulbs are T5 HO, which are 5000 lumens per tube.

BobD

[Clare Snyder]

In most cases half of that bill would still be there if you never turned the lights on. The "meter fee" or "service fee" is usually at least $15 , so a 50$ power savings would only save you about $9.00

In a shop that is used every day, or an office, the savings add up REALLY FAST.

Totally relamping the plant and warehouse, replacing high bay sodium with LED panels had a payback of less than 3 years - NOT counting what would have been spent replacing ballasts (and bulbs) over that time span - and the light is much better - and it doesn't take 3-5 minutes for the lights to get back to full bright after a power glitch!!!!!! (when the relamp was done at least 5 ballasts were needing replacement

- at about $150 a unit plus installation and the failure curve was going up exponentially - likely have needed another 12 in the next year - and each year folowing???)

Just the labour cost to replace the ballast on the high bay sodiums was ridiculous - you needed the "girraffe" and the power (277 volt) had to be shut down, putting the whole place in darkness. The flourescent panels are all "plug and play"and can be switched out on the run - keeping a few spares in stock- every failure so far (6 years now?) has been a failed solder joint on a panel - none has failed a second time after repair - 3 or 4 lamps were replaced under warranty

- they let us keep all the failed units except one and the maintenance guy found the fault before tha manufacturer did. These lights are on 8-10 hours a day, 5 and 6 days a week.

[Bob D]

I don't know what I'll do when things start to fail. When I put the T5 HO's in service, the LED availability and cost was nearly as competitive as it is now. What we don't know is how long will LED fixtures really last. Early LED bulbs had life claims that I think were vapor. I paid very high prices for name brand LED bulbs. Most of them died after two years service. I bought some cheap Chinese LEDs and they lasted 6 months. I've used CREE and Phillips and Home depot bulbs. The home depot bulbs have lasted the best but they are starting to fail after 3 years. None of them have come close to the claimed life. CREE happily replaces their bulbs at no charge with free shipping, but that still doesn't cover the aggravation.

Maybe the LED tubes will hold up better. Let's all check back with each other in five years. One of the things that bugs me about LED bulbs is that they have electronics on board and I suspect that's the weakest link, not the actual LED itself.

Bob

[whit3rd]

Maybe, but maybe not; the LEDs might be half that efficiency in a few years (they age). While individual emitters can hit 140 lumen/watt, the specs on typical bulbs are 75 lumen/watt.

But fluorescents with an electronic ballast don't have 120 Hz or 60 Hz modulation (flicker). If you work with moving machinery, that's an important advantage. The "simply rewire" means someone can replace the LED tubes with regular fluorescent tubes (and blow a fuse, or explode, or... whatever).

... and I tried a pair of those before I rebuilt with a new ballast; they didn't work (and I'm not sure why); one variant of the drop-in type comes with a warning to only use a particular model of GE "ballast", or "risk of fire or electric shock". So, the replacement will require someone to read fine print.

[DerbyDad03]

Fluorescent bulbs don't have to "die" before they need to be replaced. They tend to lose brightness over time which can be essentially be unnoticeable because it's gradual. Eventually you say "Wow, seems a bit dark in here." (or they start to flicker, not start, etc.)

Pop in a couple of new T8 tubes and you suddenly realize how dim the old ones had gotten. Now that I'm all LED, even for compact fluorescents in the closets, landing lights, etc. dimming caused by age is no longer an issue.

[krw]

Fluorescents also degrade over time, often quite quickly.

LEDs are no different.

I've thought about that. I'm not sure how to tackle it so am using the replacement tubes. I suspect bad things would happen with one of each but tubes _should_ be replaced in sets (whatever's connected to the ballast)

Sounds like either the marketing or legal (or both) at work.

[whit3rd]

False. A 4 kHz AC ballast for fluorescent tubes sustains a plasma that gives off light continually, but the same with LEDs doesn't get the same effect, because LED turns dark in a microsecond, but fluorescent turns dark in a millisecond.

The 'regular-ballast' and direct to AC wire LED variants go dark 120 times per second. SOME, not all, LED light supplies give filtered and regulated DC current, but the sales literature doesn't tell you about that.

You can see odd strobing effects on some video recordings, if the light flickers, and it can kill remote controls or make my machine tools seem stationary when in full powered motion.

[Leon]

Understood but replacing the ballast and the florescent tubes was not a solution at all.

It was in the wiring somewhere and or the terminals that were the issue.

[Clare Snyder]

And cost more than $2 each, too.

[russellseaton1]

I assumed 100% lights for electricity usage to make the math easy and it also makes it more likely the LED pays for itself. My electric usage each month is lights, TV, computer, refrigerator, washer, dryer. Furnace blower in the winter. No AC usage. Lights are maybe half of electric usage. In the winter months my electricity usage goes up a lot. 437 kwh Jan 2020. 236 kwh Sep 2020. Refrigerator runs identical year round. Washer/dryer usage is same each month. TV and computer usage is same each month. Only thing that changes between Jan and Sep is lighting. And furnace blower. So lighting added 200 kwh for me during the winter. And I burned a lot of lights at night in Sep. So I think lights are the majority electric usage for me. They probably account for 50% of my total electric bill each month.

[russellseaton1]

I wholeheartedly agree with that. If you USE the lights a lot and have a LOT of lights running all the time, then it definitely makes sense to pay the money up front and get the most efficient lights that use the least electricity. Its kind of like gas and diesel trucks. If you are running the truck hundreds of thousands of miles a year, then pay more for a diesel motor and get the extra mileage efficiency. Of course with trucks the extra power/torque of diesel matters too, not just the better mileage. But assuming your gas and diesel engines are equal in torque, then pay extra up front for the diesel if you are driving it nonstop. But if you only drive it every third Sunday in the summer to church and home, then paying extra for the more efficient diesel engine does not make sense.

The original post in this thread said he used the lights less than 5 hours in a bit less than a year. Running a light bulb less than 5 hours in a year isn't going to burn much energy no matter how efficient or inefficient it is. He said right up front that he really doesn't use the lights. So LED isn't going to give any benefits if its only on 5 hours in a whole year. You'd probably be happy enough using candles for 5 hours in a year.

[J. Clarke]

Be careful with the "extra mileage". Depending on where you are diesel can be a good deal more expensive than gas.

[Jack]

If you are worried about that, it's a simple thing to write in black magic marker in the fixture, LED ONLY.

I've replaced a lot fluorescent tubes, removing the ballasts and sticking in LEDS. In my bathrooms that each had 3 double tube el cheapo fixtures behind translucent drop ceilings, I would replace tubes about once a year or so (PIA). I replaced the tubes with LEDS, and removed the ballasts and no failures in 3 years. Better yet, I had to remove half the led bulbs because they were too bright, so now instead of 6 junk fluoresents, I have 3 LED tubes. I used the extra bulbs to replace quality Fluorescents that never failed in 45 years in my shop, just to save electiricty and for the extra light, but mainly just to use the extra LED lights.

BW, the LEDS were SUNCO 6 for $40 on Amazon. I looked, and they don't have them now, and don't know if they will be restocked. Probably a little snooping around will find similar. They are the type that work with or without the ballast. Seems stupid to use them with the ballast, but whatever.

Jack Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.