LED Lights... Making the switch
We just replaced nearly all the lights here with LED bulbs – turns out that they make drop in replacements for the circular florescent lamps we’ve used for ages, and swapping them out was pretty simple.
We went with a company called gopro (yes, its ungooglable) distributed by a local company called song cho – we ran into a local showroom my accident, tested one, and decided to go with them. The big advantage here was that we didn’t have to change our current fittings, and it was pretty simple
Next time I make a major lighting change I really need to take pictures and brightness readings for science. They are a wee bot expensive at 40-50 dollars a bulb (though we’ll be looking closely at our power bills to see if there’s a difference), but god are they bright . Then again, we went for the highest colour temperature, and indians love it bright anyway.
Ease of installation wise, the hardest part was removing the old, rusted/corroded out old ballasts, and the crumbling connectors from the old bulbs – you replace the ballast with a supplied LED driver ‘puck’, replace the old bulb with a new one (which has the same form factor) and you’re done.
The ‘tubes’ themselves are a round PCB with lots of little, massively bright LEDs, with ventilation slots at the side of the ‘rube’ facing the fixture. The light is a lot brighter, and I guess being DC driven, they should flicker less.