On Fri, 16 Oct 2020 10:12:28 -0500, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet
wrote:

On 10/16/2020 9:35 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
whit3rd writes:
On Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 2:13:48 PM UTC-7, wrote:
I just use 4 foot fluorescent lights in my shop area. I have 37 of the two bulb 4 foot fixtures in the basement. Once in a great while the fluorescent bulbs die. But its rare. And the bulbs cost $1 each or something like that.

Yep, fluorescent is still a winner on parts/availability/maturity, and was never far
behind LED in power consumption.

I would argue that a 50% reduction in power consumption between fluorescent and
LED does indicate that fluorescent is "far behind LED in power consumption".

Yeah...





I suspect the various (low-voltage DC, high-voltage AC,
dimmable, not dimmable, flickering, flicker-free, etc.) LED options mean that one
can never re-lamp or re-power a fixture, if a lamp or power brick dies, you need... a new
fixture.

You can buy replacement LED tubes for standard fluorescent fixtures, the tubes
run on line voltage, so you simply rewire the fixture to bypass the ballast.

I've converted a dozen F96T12 two-bulb fixtures with LED tubes, which _are_
easily replaceable.

You can also get LED tubes that are drop-in replacement in standard
48" fixtures using the existing ballast.


I discovered the LED florescent replacements a couple of years ago. I
kept having to replace tubes and finally replaced the ballast. AND
STILL had issues.

I went to HD to buy a complete replacement assembly. The sales guy
suggested the LED ballast bypass style. Wow, no more issues.
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)