Today Cree announced one of the holy grails of LED lighting adoption, in the form of a tube shaped LED light designed to replace the incumbent of lighting efficiency, the good ole fluorescent tube. There exists a nearly endless number of options of fluorescent tube shaped LED lights which are designed to be placed in existing fluorescent light fixtures but the Cree T8 Linear LED is the first of its kind that actually works with the existing fluorescent ballasts, no rewiring required!
Think of it, you have a standard T8 fluorescent light and want to switch from fluorescent lighting to LED but you can’t be bothered to remove and rewire the entire fixture to upgrade to the efficiency of LEDs. Well with the new Cree T8 linear LED lighting you don’t even have to, the Cree T8 light is plug and play right into existing T8 light fixtures.
The new Cree T8 linear come in two different colors with a CCT of either 3500 or 4000 Kelvin, with a CRI greater than 90 and a system efficiency of 100 lumens per watt. The only size of the Cree T8 Linear LED light is a four footer which will drop the power consumption of a typical four foot T8 lamp from 32 watts, down to 21 watts with a rated lifespan of 50,000 hours backed up by a 5 year lifetime warranty.
This type of hot-swappable technology is just begging to be adapted to the power rating and diameter of a T5 tube, and loaded up with the LED colors that reefers know and love. Unfortunately, T8 lamps are much more ubiquitous in industry, and for general lighting, so we won’t be expecting Cree to release a T5 linear LED anytime soon. In any case, this is exciting news for a future of more LEDs and even the potential for fluorescent and LED lighting to play nicely in the same fixture. [Cree]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xf2ZR4whwQ
