On Thursday, September 20, 2018 at 5:32:27 PM UTC-7, Ned Simmons wrote:

The LED 8-footers available locally were drop-in replacements for the
fluorescent tubes, i.e., require the ballast to operate. Stupid. The
lamps I purchased connect directly across the line.

Maybe not so stupid. The 'require ballast' lamps get about 24V of
excitation, which means seven or eight LED diodes in a series string, with
other strings in parallel. The 'full voltage' get 240V, so that's
seventy or eighty in series.

The failure rate for a series string of seven is 0.1 of the rate for a string of 70.
And, one string failing doesn't stop the other parallel strings from making light.

Best practice for designing LED fixtures is not compatible with reusing the
fluorescent fixtures unballasted OR with the original fluorescent ballasts.
GE makes LED fluorescent-tube-shaped lamps labeled
"Use only with General Electric LED21T8 DR/.... LED driver"