Shop lighting upgrade: T5 vs T8 fluorescent vs LED--- make money online

I am in the process of upgrading the lighting in my shop.  It currently has a number of 4-lamp and 2-lamp T12 4-foot fluorescent fixtures.  The best solution is to replace the ballast in each of these fixtures with high-efficiency electronic ballast ($15), and replace the lamps with T8 high-CRI bulbs.  This will save energy, and greatly improve the quality of the light.  LEDs and T5 fluorescent are MUCH more expensive to install, and their energy savings are not nearly enough to justify the cost.  Remember that running a T8 with an electronic ballast will provide more light than it's nominal rating, which is for magnetic ballasts.  T5 are always rated for electronic ballasts, so it is not a fair

comparison.

 For new fixtures in my shop, the cheapest/best solution is to buy $10 "shop lights" and replace the ballast.  The total fixture cost is $25, and efficiency is 96 lumens/watt for a total output of almost 6000 lumens.  It can't be beat!  Commercially-available T8 fixtures with electronic ballasts are more expensive, and the quality of the ballast is suspect.

hey everyone been here I thought it'd

make a quick video that shows what I did

to recently upgrade the lighting in my

shop so let me get behind the camera

here and show you the before and after

so you can see what I'm talking about so

on the left here this fixture is for old

t12 fluorescent lights there's four

lights in that fixture each one of the

lights is 40 watts and there are two

magnetic ballasts that are driving that

this is the new lighting this is two

tubes only 32 watts each with an

electronic ballast driving the two tubes

as you can see the lighting intensity is

pretty similar between the two the newer

one is also much whiter I have the

camera white balance set on sunlight so

hopefully this will give you some

representation of the actual quality of

the light let me also try stopping the

camera lens down so that you can see the

the actual luminance of the fixture so

there's the two bulbs the two new 32

watt bulbs and there's the old four

bulbs 40 watts each so as you can see

pretty big power savings and the quality

of the light is also quite a bit better

for the for the newer stuff so let me

tell you what what what exactly I

changed here so this catalog is what

sparked the whole idea of upgrading the

shop lighting and this catalog is mostly

LEDs in fact it's all LEDs and I thought

oh that might be pretty cool so I looked

through it and started getting some

ideas for how I might improve my shop

lighting either make it more energy

efficient and/or improve the quality of

the light itself but unfortunately LEDs

have a really long way to go in terms of

price so there's there's really only two

numbers to consider when looking at a

lighting system there's the installation

cost and we could print that in sort of

dollars per lumen so if you've got a

really bright light fixture that that

helped you won't need as many light

fixtures so dollars per lumen is

really the best way to gauge the initial

installation cost for a fixture and then

you have the lighting systems efficiency

which we could tag in lumens per dollar

and that will tell you or lumens per

watt rather so that'll tell you how many

how many watts the system is going to

burn as it's running so LEDs are not too

good in either category actually the

worst is the installation cost the

lumens per dollar so I looked through

this most of the high power LED

solutions in this catalog and

unfortunately they don't post lumens per

dollar in this catalog I don't know why

it seems like a pretty important number

to me but these these LEDs are all

pretty large form factor you know there

some of them are custom I mean most of

them are kind of weird sizes but bridge'

Lux seems to have the best the cheapest

ones the best lumens per dollar so I

calculated it out and the best ones are

about 82 lumens per dollar which is

actually not that good just for

comparison these t8 fluorescent lights

are about 240 lumens per dollar so

that's not very good I mean we're

talking you know four times at least

well not quite four I guess three times

more in this case but some of these

other LEDs are not even as good as 82

lumens per dollar and then the other

problem is that the the color spectrum

on these LEDs is not very continuous

fluorescents produce a better quality of

light meaning that they have a higher

color rendering index so things will

look better under fluorescent lighting

at least so far

I mean LED technology is still coming

along but at this point it's really not

even worth considering and in terms of

energy efficiency again that the

fluorescent light beats at the LED is

coming in at about 86 lumens per watt

without counting its power supply that's

assuming a 100% efficient power supply

for the LED which is not going to happen

either so even if the power supply is

90% efficient we're still talking like

70 to 80 lumens per watt which which is

not good

I mean this this fluorescent right here

is at least 92 lumens per watt and it

might even be a little bit better with

an electronic ballast so the next sort

of once discounting LEDs the next thing

to consider are what Watts style

fluorescent so this is an old t12 lamp

this is a t8 lamp and the t5 lamps I

don't have because I didn't buy any

they're very expensive and if you go on

the net you'll see a lot of information

about oh you know t5 as well that's

really the way to go is the best thing

but the way that the measurements are

taken in terms of lumens per watt oh the

t5 s end up looking a lot better than

they actually are one problem is that t5

fluorescents are rated in terms of their

efficiency at electronic ballast

frequencies so an electronic ballast

operates at twenty or thirty kilohertz

or something and provides the ball with

a pretty high or higher efficiency than

at sixty Hertz t8 and t12 fluorescent

bulbs are rated at 60 Hertz even though

you could buy electronic ballasts and

run them off of that which is what

actually most high quality lighting

installations do so it's really not fair

to compare lumens per watt from t8 to t5

unless you're comparing them the same

drive frequency with the same electronic

ballast basically and when you do that

the t5 efficiency is only just a tiny

bit better than t8 I mean we're talking

like a couple percent at most or

something and the higher fixture cost

and the higher bulb cost doesn't come

close to to making it worthwhile

so t8 is absolutely the obvious choice

for a for shop lighting so t12 is is old

and this is really out I mean at this

point t t12 is not competitive in terms

of lighting quality or lumens per watt

or anything so this is not one old tube

and this is probably what's in your shop

now if you haven't changed the lighting

in a while so we'll get rid of that

t5 is still pretty new it's it's a

really thin bulb 5/8 of an inch that's

where that the t number comes from 12 is

12 eighths of an inch or an inch and a

half t8 is 1 inch and t5 is 5/8 and if

you go to your local Home Depot or

Lowe's or whatever you might find like a

few t5 fixtures but generally not that

many and them and there's not very many

bulbs to choose from so why does t8 win

t8 is really nice because you can choose

from a lot of different bulbs if you get

an electronic ballast they'll operate

very efficiently you just saw that two

t8 bulbs the 32 watt t8 bulbs were

pretty comparable in light output to for

old t12 bulbs so I'm not saying this is

a fair comparison between new t8 or old

t12 and new t8 I'm trying to say that if

you're upgrading the lighting in your

shop this is the kind of improvement you

could expect to see from your old t12

bulbs so the other nice thing about t8

is that the the base is the same so you

can upgrade your lighting fixtures

without changing the actual fixture

itself you can just open it up take out

the old ballast put in a new electronic

ballast and then put the new lights in

you don't have to landfill the whole

light fixture so let me show you what I

did I rented those four bulb fixtures in

the ceiling and then also added some two

bulb fixtures to other areas in the shop

and for those the cheapest way to go is

to actually buy cheap $10 shop lights by

$15 electronic ballasts and then just do

the retrofit on the new on the new shop

light fixture so what I did was I just

you know cracked it open right away and

just ripped out that old magnetic

ballast which is not very efficient and

these are Sylvania 4 bulb ballasts the

model number is qtp 4 X 32 t8 / u NV

which is universal voltage

I ended up going with the 5,000 K day

light bulbs which are actually really

nice that the spectrum is good and these

have a CRI or a color rendering index of

86 which is not excellent but quite good

for fluorescent bulbs and the high CRI

actually makes it look like things are

brighter like colors are easier to see

under a light with a high CRI and it's

definitely a worthwhile upgrade spend

the extra fifty cents or a dollar to get

the decent bulbs the other benefit of

having an electronic ballast is that the

lights don't flicker at least not

visibly not like an old magnetic ballast

and the ballasts don't hum so those are

also some really good improvements that

if you spend you know eight hours or

more a day under this lighting believe

me at the end of the day having a

flicker free Humphry full spectrum

lighting is definitely worth it and if

you're saving energy in the process it's

just win all around so so there you go

so a ten dollar shop light fifteen

dollar ballast put it together with the

full spectrum lights and you'll save

quite a lot of energy and have better

light so I hope that was helpful see you

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