Electric Light, that's about the nicest thing you've ever said about LEDs.
I've never been not nice about LEDs. I'm only critical about misapplications they market for that I find to be improper and claims that are more than a bit puffed up.
A little engine that works great in a Honda Civic isn't necessarily efficient if you gang up a hundred of them to power a big vessel. Bunker fuel burning marine diesels are among the most efficient engines known to man kind, but they can't be scaled down to something small enough for a car and give the same performance (50% fuel to mechanical efficiency).
So, learn to accept running a Titanic on VTEC engines is inefficient and not cost effective.
They're both great technology. The applications of LEDs I see today aren't always proper.
careful out there with these replacement tubes. I had a distributor come in here the other day with LED tubes that could be installed with the ballast in line. The company's spec sheet said their product had an 85 CRI.
Those are another product of marketing gimmick. Some can function with ballast in place, but of course, it reduces the overall system efficacy.
If you're installing LEDs on an old ballast you don't have a maintenance free product. Also, they stated that their product works with "most" ballasts. What happens if you experience many failures but the company says that the ballast you had is not compatible with their product?
LEDs can not run straight across the line like incandescent lamps. LED "lamps" have integrated passive or electronic driver/power supply/ballast. A fluorescent ballast is a driver but LED marketeers see ballast as a dirty word. It's a matter of semantics, like 4WD vs AWD.
For the ones that work with existing ballasts in place, leaving them in place is a installation cost saving at the expense of overall efficacy. It's also a ground for insurance denial on ballast fire originating from existing ballast as it constitutes usage for unintended application.
So contrary to what LED sales like you to believe, LEDs are no strangers to outage due to ballast/driver/power supply failure.
And lastly, they touted that the LED tube could be used with electronic and magnetic ballasts. I wonder how that is possible considering magnetic ballasts use twice the current of electronic ballasts?
A magnetic ballast simply behaves as a limited current 60Hz power source. An electronic ballast's 60KHz power may not allow LED module's driver to function properly. Ballast current and power input varies depending on load.
Check out new display cases at Target grocery area. These LEDs are not nearly as efficacious as T8 fluorescent, therefore to use them for general lighting is a poor application. They're on a motion detector switch though.
It is not an acceptable option with fluorescent, because the ramp up time would be far too excessive, so until recently they're started at store opening and left on. With LEDs, they can be short cycled and reach full output immediately in frigid conditions.
Leaving fluorescent light on all the time is very detrimental in display cases, because the heat needed to stay warm is a load on refrigeration system, yet they take too long to warm up for frequent shut down.