I’m planning to replace 48" fluorescent tubes with 48" LEDs. It appears I have a choice. There are LED tubes that require me to remove the ballasts in the fixtures and there are LED tubes that do not require the ballasts be removed. Certainly the latter would be simpler, but is it best the ballasts be removed? Thx.
The ballast usually seems to be the first part of a fluorescent light to fail. A large part of the reason to want to replace fluorescents with LEDs is to get rid of that failure mode.
TLDR: I’d get rid of the ballast. It’ll make life easier in the long run, but you have to be comfortable doing some rewiring.
I did about 200 of them in my store. I went with ballast bypass/direct wire (removing the ballast). I’m not sure what the difference is as far as energy consumption. My reason for doing it was so that I wouldn’t still be changing ballasts. I already have (well, had) to change them often enough and part of the reason for the upgrade was so I wouldn’t have to do that anymore.
One thing you have to keep in mind with ballast bypass LED tubes is that the the lamp holders MUST be non-shunted. This is easily confirmed with a continuity tester/multi meter.
If you look where the wires enter the holder, there’s holes on both sides (usually two on each side). For most T8 tubes, they’re connected internally. If you wire L and N to those, you’ll have a dead short. You need to upgrade* them to non-shunted, where the two sides are separate.
The LED tubes, at least the Eiko brand that I used) are only powered on one end, the other side are just dummy pins to hold it into standard florescent tubes.
*(or, in a few cases where I ran out, opened them up, cut out the internal connection and close them back up)
Some discussion and a how to in this video.
I am not sure if this a home application or a bigger scale one.
When I looked into this a year back, LED replacement tubes did not give the same level of illumination as regular fluorescent tubes. (Unless you buy really expensive ones). Moreover, the power savings were not that great (when you compare light bulb power savings)
Ballast life is temperature and type (traditional/electronic) dependent. If the light is in a cold place, ballasts last longer.
For the few fluorescents I had, mainly for the closet, I ended up buying a 12 pack of replacement fluorescent tubes for the price of one LED and keeping them for future replacement.
I did buy complete LED fixtures from Costco that worked out better price wise and ease of installation.
LED tubes are still evolving and I would wait for them to get mature. When you see warehouses replacing them in bulk, that would be the right time.
In a house, especially in a closet, I would just go with whatever is the cheapest to install.
My installation is in a store. The lights are turned on anywhere from 10 to 24 hours a day. A fixture with 4 florescent tubes drew .69amps (a little over 80 watts). Replacing it with 4 ballast bypass LEDs dropped it to .44amps (a little over 52watts).
The savings, when looked at like that, isn’t that much. A buck a month or something like that. However, it’s a lot of lights, so it adds up, AND that’s not taking into consideration having to replace bulbs and ballasts on a regular basis. We’re probably saving $150-$200 a year just due to not replacing bulbs/ballast/fixtures etc.
I had three florescent fixtures (4 tubes each) in my mud room and pantry. A few years back I removed the ballasts and installed LED replacement tubes. The ones available at that time required ballast removal as well as tombstone replacement with non-shunted.
No hum and we were quite happy with the change.
I have two in my kitchen. Flip the switch and they come on just like a normal bulb with none of that annoying flickering. I put them up sometime in 15 or 16 so their longevity is not in doubt.
I replaced my kitchen fluorescents with LED’s and found they are brighter, so much so that instead of 4 (2 sets of 2) I just have 3 (2 on one and 1 on the other). They were not super expensive.
I had a similar situation last summer, after my research I found the best / easiest option to be full fixture replacements.
While I have the skills to do it, I thought for the time and trouble to modify my existing fixtures etc. it wasn’t worth my effort to save a couple dollars.
The cheapest I found were from Costco Canada, so far very happy with them:
Contrary to what some others are saying, my LEDs are noticeably brighter than the 36w florescent tubes they replaced. Not all LEDS lights are the same, they vary by LEDs per foot, which varies the lumens and cost.
Match the LED/foot to your use, brighter is not always better. In a closet you need less brightness per foot than a garage or workshop. If you decide to modify your existing fixtures, just make sure the tube replacements have the appropriate brightness level for your use.
Also - you need to match the “colour temperature” to your usage as well. 4000K is considered “daylight”, lower than that is more yellow light and higher is more “white” light (similar to fluorescent). Usually lower colour temps are used for accent lighting (like fixture above kitchen cabinets), where true colour rendition doesn’t matter.
Higher colour temps are more for task lighting, but it’s a matter of personal preference as well. I personally preferred the 4000K level for my garage and workshop, but no right or wrong on that one.
Word of warning, if you have T12 fluorescents with magnetic ballasts, in most cases you need to bypass the ballasts, the direct replacements are for T8 only. A T12 ballast will overdrive a T8 retrofit tube. Someone installed a pair in a fixture at my church and one of the tubes failed in a spectacular fashion.
My preference is to use the retrofits that replace the ballast with an external driver rather than direct replacement or ballast bypass. These improve heat dissipation and don’t result in mains voltage on the sockets. Or replacing the entire fixture with one designed for the optics of LEDs rather than the optics of fluorescents, which are nowhere close to the same.
That’s also what you do when you replace dual-phosphor florescents with modern tri or quad-phosphor florescents. And new tubes are 50% brighter than end-of-life tubes anyway.
But LED’s dim as they age too: in 5 years you may want to put the extra tube back in.