Latest in Lighting... LED direct replacements for Fluorescent Tubes are here!

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I guess many of us have heard about LED's being used to replace halogen lighting, incandescent bulbs & just about everything else out there. LED's are being used in everything from car lights to traffic lights these days, mainly because of their very good efficiency, hence money saving & thus environment saving abilities. The best of fluoro tubes, the quad phosphor tube, which came out earlier this year, has actually cut an office electricity costs for lighting by 50% over conventional fluoro tubes. The new lighting also made the office noticeably brighter, improved people's moods, allowed the CCTV cameras to work more effectively & made it safer & less prone to graffiti & vandalism attacks at night. These ecoLED direct replacement tubes are even better, though they do cost a little more, although they've only recently met Australian Standards & so have just come onto our markets. A local company has begun marketing them (www.tenrod.com.au) at about $80 per daylight T8 tube. The price falls to $60 each for quantities of 100+. These run at about half the power consumption of even the quad phosphor tubes just described. They also contain no mercury or lead & have a much longer life. New home builders will have to give serious thought to using these tubes, especially with electricity prices set to rise very sharply once the carbon taxes kick in. Down here, the commercial electricity rate is 24 cents per kilowatt hour. It costs $100.92 to run a conventional ballasted 36W fitting (drawing 48W total) for a year. An ecoLED 20W tube with better light output drops the total cost to just $42 (a $58.92 saving per tube per year). One doesn't need to be a Chartered Accountant to figure out that installing these tubes into a parking station would have a very short pay back time. There are functional advantages too. When one flicks the switch to "on", there's a two second delay before lighting up to full brilliance. There's no flick-flick-flickering & no gradual build-up to full light output. There's no strobing, like conventional tubes have & also no buzzing, hum or whistle. Radio interference is extremely low. The tubes can each accept a mains supply of between 80V AC & 265V AC with no compromise in light output. They also work even better in cold environments like fridges & freezers while conventional tubes have problems starting. Your thoughts please. How would it go down at your workplace if you were to come up with a report detailing how much money this sort of change would save the company & improve safety, mood, light output, etc at the same time? With more than three times the life of conventional tubes, they may also never need replacing! I reckon a pay rise or promotion would be in order, don't you? At least everyone there will love you to bits forever... okay, that's going a bit too far, but they look set to be well worth the effort!