On Friday, October 16, 2020 at 10:23:12 PM UTC-5, Clare Snyder wrote:
On Fri, 16 Oct 2020 13:24:06 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Friday, October 16, 2020 at 9:35:43 AM UTC-5, 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".

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.


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.


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.






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.



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.