The commercial sector, which includes commercial and institutional buildings as well as street and highway lighting, consumes the majority of kilowatt-hours of energy per year, which is why it is so important that they start using LED based lighting. Most of these commercial buildings and places are also fitted with fluorescent sockets based on the T8 standard. This is the main reason why developing T8 LED lamps could have such a huge impact on conserving energy.
Cree recently released an LED based lamp, which due to its standard T8 socket, and other specs could easily replace classic fluorescent lamps. The New Cree T8 lamps are also compatible with over 90% of electronic T8 ballasts, including instant start, programmed start, rapid start as well as dimmable fluorescent ballasts.
The company also promises a 30% energy cost savings when using these lamps instead of 32W fluorescent T8s, while the investment in them should be paid back in less than 3 years.
The Cree T8s offer 100 lumens-per-watt at the system level, while they deliver an output of 2100 lumens per LED lamp, and require 21 watts of input power. These lamps also use the Cree True White Technology.
Other specs include:
– CRI: 90
– CCT: 3500K, 4000K
– Controls: Dimmable (ballast dependent)
– Lifetime: Designed to last 50,000 hours
– Limited Warranty: 5 Years
According to the specs, the Cree T8 LED lamp is about as efficient as the Philips T8 LED, which also boasts 100 lumens per watt. The Philips T8, however, has a CRI of 85 while the Cree has a CRI of 90, which is an advantage for the latter since the quality of the light should be better. Whichever is chosen, though, should result in huge savings both in terms of energy consumption as well as energy cost. Due to the longevity of these lamps, replacement costs would also be quite low.
Below is a video showing the Cree T8 LED series lamp in action.
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