Thread: Shop lighting

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There may be a significant reduction in the lumens per bulb, with some LEDs. I see $4 bulbs that produce 1800 lumens, or 100 lumens per watt. There are more expensive bulbs that produce around 140 lumens per watt, with around 2800 lumens of output.

My T8 fluorescent bulbs use 32 watts and put out 2850 lumens, which is 89 watts per lumen. That's not much different than some LEDs.

If I was going to make the switch, I'd buy the $8, 20W bulbs with 2800 lumen output to avoid lower the light levels in my shop. That would cost $416, compared to $156 for fluorescent. If I ran all of them for 8 hours per day, it would cost $.75 per day instead of $1.20 per day. The bulbs would pay for themselves in 472 days. Running half the lights would take twice as long to pay off - 2.6 years.

FWIW, with 52 bulbs covering 1800 square feet, it comes out to 82 lumens per square foot, which is adequate lighting for most tasks. I have four switches, so I only light the shop area where I'm working and leave the rest off. I usually have about half of the lights on, most of the time. I can run half of the lights, 8 hours per day, for about $19 per month.