Where Can I Find LED Tube Lighting?

Converting to LED lighting is a fantastic investment not only for the earth, but for your wallet. Get advice on hunting down harder-to-find LEDs, and what to consider before purchasing LED tube lights for older flourescent fixtures.

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LESLIE: Scott in Alaska needs some help with energy-efficient lighting. How can we help you?

SCOTT: Yes, I’m currently changing over my house to all LED lighting. And I also – I have, currently, a few rooms with fluorescent-tube lighting and I’d like to change those over to LED. And I live up here in Alaska and I just haven’t been able to find the tubes with LED.

TOM: LED tube lights are available. You can probably find them online and have them shipped to you. But they’re made in the same exact shape as the standard fluorescent bulbs. You know, they’re not inexpensive but they do have a very long life. Those kinds of lights will typically last like 50,000 hours or something crazy like that. I think the bulbs themselves are probably, I would guess, $20 or $30 a piece.

LESLIE: And the shipping is probably going to be a hundred.

TOM: Yeah, exactly. But they’re going to last a lot longer. I mean at this point, though, I would also price out replacement fixtures. Because you might find by the time you buy all those bulbs, it might be cheaper just to replace the fixtures – which will also make conversion from incandescents to LEDs less of a guessing game. Plus, I don’t know how much energy is going to be wasted, because all those fixtures have the transformers built into them. There may be some system waste, in terms of the fixture itself.

SCOTT: OK. I’m just looking. I’m very impressed with the LED brightness and of course, the energy savings over a period of time. And I just want my whole house to be energy-efficient and save me money in the long run, so – but I just can’t seem to find them up here in Alaska yet.

TOM: Yeah. I would order them online and have them shipped. That would be the way to get them to your door, OK?