I've swapped out a bunch of exterior bulbs at a commercial building with LEDs.

Went from constantly changing the old sodium bulbs that would flicker and give off un-even yellowish lighting to bright, even light.
These lights are on from evening to morning 365 days a year, and none have failed yet.

The ballasts in the fixtures were going bad, and new ballasts cost more than buying a new fixture.
All I did was bypass the ballasts, turn the socket back into 110v and screw in an LED bulb.

I changed out every bulb in my home to LED's, spots, floods, even the small base candelabra bulbs in the ceiling fans. I changed the yard light to a 35W corn type LED bulb, bypass the mercury vapor fixture's ballast which uses a photocell.

Con Ed just adjusted my monthly payment (level Billing) by $100 per month, a 33% decrease.

I love my LED's. BTW, no failures in the past 3 years of the change over.

I like the LEDs but not a big fan of CFLs. My wife dropped and cracked one, so then the mercury dust gets in the carpet, and you can't vaccuum it, and you have to shut off the ac etc etc. Painful.

We paid a fortune to convert our local corporate office over to LED's this year, the bulb count was in high thousands. They do fail, it's evident all over the building, but certainly not as often.

The contractor is claiming it's "dirty power," but that's all left to the courts at this point. It does seem unlikely that it's our power though, we run a tier 3 datacenter out of the same building, and the power is certified by our datacenter vendor, and an independent certification program. Not to mention that we generate most of the primary power anyway.

VP wants them all removed and replaced with what, who knows? But its going to eat a huge chunk out of my facilities budget if we do.

I walked into my bathroom this morning and the globe off of one of the 3 year old CFLs I referred to in post #14 way lying in my sink. It just fell off! The light works fine and the color looks just like it did with the globe on it. I'm going to contact Cree to see what their warranty situation is.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1437343231.jpg

The globe just fell off.



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1437343256.jpg


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1437343278.jpg

I can't tell a difference in the light output between the good bulb and the globe-less one.