LED replacement for a Fluorescent Tube

[church]

I just received an LED replacement for a Fluorescant tube. I tried it in one of my fixtures I use for UV tubes and here is the surprise. The light output is good the colour temp of my sample was 6000K. It works with or without a ballast which makes it useful for retrofit in existing fixtures, just replace the tube and when the ballast eventually dies remove the ballast. We are now evaluating them as a replacement for the 10,000 tubes that we have in the facility that I work in for my day job. the 4ft tube only uises 18W, the tubes come in four colour temps.

I also know one local company is evaluating them for use in their movie light boxes. Anyway the link is below.

GIELIGHT CO., LTD-

[derekleffew]

I know I'm going to regret asking this but...cost per tube?

[church]

we are told if you want to buy a sample of one the price is $18/tube and after that it depends on what quantity. We got our sample for free. The life is 50,000 hours and it uses 18W, the light output is 2000 lumens.

For us the big saving is labour for installation - it can run with the existing ballast and as the ballast fails we can eliminate the ballast. We were looking to replace the existing T12 tubes and ballasts with T8 tubes and ballasts and now we are also evaluating the LED tubes. Depends on the ROI.

[gafftaper]

Wow that's a really interesting twist. It'll be interesting to see if the technology goes mainstream or not.

[church]

A T8 tubes use 25W of power and produce 2050 lumens but we have to change ballasts as well as the T12 ballast doesn't work with a T8 tube. The scary thing is we have over a thousand fixtures each of which needs four tubes. The power saving ignoring the ballast loss is huge. Also the power factor of the LED tube is 0.93 which helps as well because as an industrial establishment our billing rate is determined by our worst case power factor in the month. We have power factor correction but the load is not constant during the day and swings around so anything that reduces this helps us out.

[ledlite]

I am also testing LED replacement tubes for low level use in garage basement. I have a trial tube that claims 100,000 hours plus - now you have to hang around a long time to ensure this is valid. Anyway looks an easy decision - we are using 36 Watt T8's 4 ft - with ballast & starter watts are close to 50. Our trial tube is 15 W - so payback is probably between 2 & 3 years in high use situations. Tubes are expensive but our internal rate of return calulations are 55% per anum if life expectantcy gets close to that claimed. In any case electric savings are so significant these things probably only have to last another 12 months after payback to give a strong ROI. This is not without risks but the opportunity is so great it far outweighs any downside.

[dannyn]

That is very cool.
I did not think that it would be possible beacuse of the way that florescent tubes start up.
Do you know if they are indoor/outdoor?

[gafftaper]

Originally Posted by ledlite

I am also testing LED replacement tubes for low level use in garage basement. I have a trial tube that claims 100,000 hours plus - now you have to hang around a long time to ensure this is valid. Anyway looks an easy decision - we are using 36 Watt T8's 4 ft - with ballast & starter watts are close to 50. Our trial tube is 15 W - so payback is probably between 2 & 3 years in high use situations. Tubes are expensive but our internal rate of return calulations are 55% per anum if life expectantcy gets close to that claimed. In any case electric savings are so significant these things probably only have to last another 12 months after payback to give a strong ROI. This is not without risks but the opportunity is so great it far outweighs any downside.

Hey LEDlite that's some amazing information. It sounds like you work for a manufacturer of this or a similar product. If you are, it's great to have manufacturers reps around CB, but there are a few special rules for you to follow. Be sure to stop by the New Member's board to introduce yourself. It's your one chance to brag all about yourself and your company (within reason).

[ledlite]

When you instal a LEd tube you can just remove the starter & many/most will operate with or without ballast. However the removal of the ballast will often represent a very significant portion of the savings.

We are using the tubes inside - but there are now increasing numbers of LED products for just about any purpose you can imagine, ...

[church]

The savings are tremendous with the LED tubes, we worked out that we will reduce our power consumption by greater than 3MWh per day. This compares with the 2.4MWh per day savings for the T8 tubes. We haven't taken into account the ballast savings because we may just replace the tubes and then only remove ballasts as they fail. Regardless the ROI is lss than 3 years.