Impressed by LED tubes

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spark master

Senior Member
Location
cyberspace
I was in a store today, and they had LED tubes. Appeared to be T8 LED retrofit tubes, as the fixtures looked 100 years old. Ceiling height was about 12 feet, and the lighting was beautiful. I talked to the owner, who didn't know much about it. He just said some company came in, and did it for free; which means the company took 100% of the rebate for the job. But aside from the that, I was rather impressed by the LED tube itself.

I'd like to know if they changed the ballast, but I couldn't get any information from the store owner.
 

jusme123

Senior Member
Location
NY
Occupation
JW
....induction lighting will be the next latest and greatest, I also question the use of rebates. Should I get a gas tax break because my car gets 35 MPG and trucks get 14 MPG?
 

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
The life of those are still up in the air, they are supposed to last longer if kept cool, but we are having failures in three to four years in coolers and freezers. Just put in a two new 2x2 LED lay in fixtures from GE yesterday, light spread and color was pretty good, you could not tell it was an LED fixture. Looked like a skylight. We will see how this fixture holds up.
 

steve_p

Senior Member
I was in a store today, and they had LED tubes. Appeared to be T8 LED retrofit tubes, as the fixtures looked 100 years old. Ceiling height was about 12 feet, and the lighting was beautiful. I talked to the owner, who didn't know much about it. He just said some company came in, and did it for free; which means the company took 100% of the rebate for the job. But aside from the that, I was rather impressed by the LED tube itself.

I'd like to know if they changed the ballast, but I couldn't get any information from the store owner.

There is someone in my area installing these. No ballast, they are 120V.
 

jusme123

Senior Member
Location
NY
Occupation
JW
I have seen them installed in a new 5 level parking garage, and was pretty impressed with how bright they are.
 

TNBaer

Senior Member
Location
Oregon
Be wary, I know leviton and other socket manufacturers said they won't warranty failures in their sockets because they are not rated for line voltage.

I've yet to see LED I like. There's too much I dislike and remember, I'm the energy saving guy.

For outdoor, low wattage HID replacement I'm a fan. But for indoor LED takes a tremendous CRI hit. The lumen maintenance is awful. I think a lot of these companies are boosting the output of the LEDs, which generates heat, and will lead to early failure. Imagine for a moment, have you ever opened a lensed troffer and been shocked by the heat even with T8s? A lot of these LEDs are rated at 120 degrees, in an enclosed fixture without proper heat dissapation in a retrofit, what do you think the life is going to be? When an early failure happens, do you think a lot of these guys are going to be warrantying this stuff? Take a company like Globaltech, designing LEDs with a fan mounted right to the board. First, what good is an fan in an enclosed fixture? Second, don't motors generate heat? They say it's 100,000 hour product. They claim a lot of things. Who's doing the testing? As the LED market tales off I'm seeing more and more bad design. More and more guys call me all the time who have no idea what they are doing, buying product with outrageous claims.

I want to know who does the testing, what the lumen maintenance is, whose chip they are using, what the CRI is. I am very, very, cautious; LED tests well because people mistake glare for brightness.
 

tom baker

First Chief Moderator
Staff member
....induction lighting will be the next latest and greatest, I also question the use of rebates. Should I get a gas tax break because my car gets 35 MPG and trucks get 14 MPG?

Induction lighting has been around for many years, has good applications but as the cost of LEDs come down induction will be replaced by LED. The IES lightfair is nearly all LED applications. There are many large scale installations of LED street lighting, City of LA is replacing 140,000 HPS with LED, read about how successful it has been here:
http://www.ci.la.ca.us/bsl/
 

TNBaer

Senior Member
Location
Oregon
There's some painfully brutal stuff happening out there. It's bad. Look at this installation outside at a Nordstrom.

385219_353092848131046_1992757855_n.jpg


Look, I like the fact that people are trying to be energy savvy. But this is a brutal looking installation on a nice parking deck of a high end retailer. How long do you think this fixture is going to last once some 19 year old kids find it on a Saturday night? Also, this is a wallpack mounted to a knuckle. The photometrics for this fixture are not suited to this purpose in any way. Just awful.

But this is what we are getting. I posted here over a year ago my experience, which was good, with LED. Now I'm fending off countless guys trying to make a quick buck with awful product designed in even worse ways.
 

Stevareno

Senior Member
Location
Dallas, TX
I'd like to know if they changed the ballast, but I couldn't get any information from the store owner.

There is someone in my area installing these. No ballast, they are 120V.

I guess it depends on the manufacturer. The supply house I frequent has a standard two lamp fixture on display retrofitted with 2 LED "tube" lamps and it does use a module that converts the incoming 120/277v to 24 vdc, IIRC.
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
I changed the 50 watt GU10 lamps in my kitchen to LED, and it looks a lot brighter, and saving approx 350 watts.

Why oh why? It's desirable to have strong R9 in kitchen. I think the Philips L prize is the only one with a good R9 rendering using red LED emitters as its a part of L prize requirements.

LEDs often suck even in Ra8 CRI and some of the best ones like CREE CR and troffers are comparable to RE80 fluorescent tubes. The both have a big heatsink.

Given the same wattage, LEDs have the highest proportion of wattage that needs to be cooled by heat sink. It can't spit it out into the space by infrared, because lower tolerance for high temperature means less radiant energy.

Tube lamps generally suck, because heat management is difficult.

A 10W LED source behaves similarly to a 10W incandescent lamp lit inside an opaque box, because it can't reject heat via radiation.

In my opinion though, a 10W LED fixture is likely to be more reliable than a common 10W CFL. Not because of LED technology, but since LEDs are inherently heat sensitive, the design is much more conscious of heat consideration. A Lighting Research Center study found that residential CFL fixtures are vulnerable, because, the electronic ballast is subject to abusive conditions due to lack of heat sinking.

http://www.solaislighting.com/downl...ais_Active Cooling_White Paper-10-10-2010.pdf
 

marshatl

Member
I believe that the last test done by Caliper, the DOE's LED testing program, was rounds 11 and 12 dealing with linear LED tubes.
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/caliper_round12_summary.pdf
The testing was done June 2011 so it is a bit dated, but not a lot has changed since then. Their testing shows that the best LED replacement tubes were performing on par with a comparable fluorescent source. And the life ratings are still in that 40,000 hour range in nice temperatures for heat dissipation. Fluorescent tubes aren't quite that long of life, but at $2-3 each versus $30-40 for an LED tube it doesn't make much sense. Now in cold environments where fluorescent really loses a lot of lumen output it makes sense.

A dedicated LED fixture designed with the right LEDs, heat sinking and performance characteristics is really what you need to look at when retrofitting. And even then it won't fit all applications, especially interior.

The LED replacement for incandescent make a lot more sense. You do see a big energy savings plus and increase in life. But price point and low level dimming issues still hinder that market. Plus color rendering does take a hit no matter what. The Philips L lamp with remote phosphor and the Cree product line with red LED enhancement take some of that out of the equation. The rest of the LED world lives at the same color level as compact fluorescent which has some real peaks and valleys in how well it renders different colors.

I spend all day dealing with LED and have a ton of great applications where it makes sense, especially on the exterior. But you have to be very careful in who you deal with and where the product is being designed at. A lot of people are throwing LEDs (which has a wide range of good and bad) in existing housings and saying here is a great LED product. Reality is we are already getting calls to come out and fix "old" LED jobs with the right product to make it work.
 

TNBaer

Senior Member
Location
Oregon
Why oh why? It's desirable to have strong R9 in kitchen. I think the Philips L prize is the only one with a good R9 rendering using red LED emitters as its a part of L prize requirements.

What? You don't want everything to look a morgue in a bad TV cop drama?

HA! I installed some LED highbays, some real nice ones, in a high end facility last month. Guy had to have them and all. We all looked blue!

I go to my 7-11 which is all LED and it looks awful. All the colors inside look washed out to me.
 

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
Why oh why? It's desirable to have strong R9 in kitchen. I think the Philips L prize is the only one with a good R9 rendering using red LED emitters as its a part of L prize requirements.

LEDs often suck even in Ra8 CRI and some of the best ones like CREE CR and troffers are comparable to RE80 fluorescent tubes. The both have a big heatsink.

Given the same wattage, LEDs have the highest proportion of wattage that needs to be cooled by heat sink. It can't spit it out into the space by infrared, because lower tolerance for high temperature means less radiant energy.

Tube lamps generally suck, because heat management is difficult.

A 10W LED source behaves similarly to a 10W incandescent lamp lit inside an opaque box, because it can't reject heat via radiation.

In my opinion though, a 10W LED fixture is likely to be more reliable than a common 10W CFL. Not because of LED technology, but since LEDs are inherently heat sensitive, the design is much more conscious of heat consideration. A Lighting Research Center study found that residential CFL fixtures are vulnerable, because, the electronic ballast is subject to abusive conditions due to lack of heat sinking.

http://www.solaislighting.com/downl...ais_Active Cooling_White Paper-10-10-2010.pdf

The color rendition on the ones I have is real good, they do not have the blue tint the older ones do. The fixtures I have were designed for very hot 50 watt lamps that were like a sauna walking under them. It will take a long time for the payoff, if ever, but they will reduce my cooling load this summer, and give a much brighter look for the kitchen. I have compact flouresents everywhere else.
 
In my opinion though, a 10W LED fixture is likely to be more reliable than a common 10W CFL. Not because of LED technology, but since LEDs are inherently heat sensitive, the design is much more conscious of heat consideration. A Lighting Research Center study found that residential CFL fixtures are vulnerable, because, the electronic ballast is subject to abusive conditions due to lack of heat sinking.

http://www.solaislighting.com/downl...ais_Active Cooling_White Paper-10-10-2010.pdf

But in fact, due to limitation of technology or just cost of material, LED fixtures are most likely with poor heat management especiallly for high power applications. We can't say that boiled egg has better boilling fastness than raw egg.
 
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