so today we're going to try and convince even the most frugal of landlords or building owners
that you can save enormous amounts of energy by swapping out fluorescent tubes for led retrofit
tubes now we haven't looked at these on the channel ever before so as ever when it comes to
lighting we turn to some trusted experts and we've got hold of some Philips corepro LED tubes by Signify um
but first of all you've got a little bit of a mission didn't you here you sent me down to the
toolbox i swung open the door and it wasn't just the lights above my head that looked like they
were from yesteryear the shop itself looked like maybe where art front would have been beyond the
counter it had bric-a-bracha from everywhere yeah but it's uh yeah it's a very useful shop in town
so if you knew there's any hardware bits but yeah it is a little bit like going to uh yeah open all
hours and we'll get on to those operating hours a little bit later on but you've brought back
what are best described as a a relic of a light thing so it may be an old shot but it's certainly
they've skipped a few generations of energy saving potential so we've got here fluorescent batten
fitting with conventional magnetic control gear in there yeah switch starts yeah so this this looks
yeah so we're going to use this as a little case study to show how much money and energy we can
save i mean interesting even the lamp itself was an original phillips one it was yeah and they're
58 watts and they are 1500mm aren't they so in length 5 foot i think you find in your day
back in the day however so when i'm thinking about changing out i'm thinking about saving energy i'm
also thinking about the amount of time it's going to be paid backed in okay so that payback time to
me is really important and i know when they were thinking about supermarkets and changing over to
led back then they were talking years and years and years so i'm going to take a bit of convincing
how much energy i'm going to save and how long it's going to take me to recoup my investment
okay but the good thing about energy retrofits with just replacing a lamp is you don't have to
obviously touch the fixed wiring right where some costs can come in but think of those applications
the shop there clearly they've they've managed to miss out yeah the potential save energy so they
weren't interested in changing to led fittings but there may be some other reasons why you can't do
that there might be some asbestos in the ceiling the wiring might not be up to quite the latest
standard you don't want to have to go through any uh rewiring or the fitting itself might be
all the value might be in the fitting so we sometimes see that in say like an underpass
where you have vandal resistant fittings and things like that where a quick fluorescent
you know change out put a lamp tube in is great so we're ready to go on this we've got our um
hammock power meter here garen okay so let me bring this in i'm gonna have a little look at
what you're up to yep so we've got our tube plate through the quick test i've got a parameter shows
the line voltage the current draw and the wattage okay so i'm just going to connect
that up and boot up our fluorescent thing you're ready for this yeah we should hear a dunk dunk
it's magnetic so there we go okay and we're on we're on we're struck yeah so we're off and
running yeah so the first thing you might notice is when you look at the power to 58 watt tube
oh wow well it can't be a 58 watt tube because we've got 60 66 what's that yeah and obviously one
of the reasons we went to uh electronic ballasts we went from magnetic ballast to electronic
ballot in the past was because we gained energy efficiency by doing that and obviously you can
see there's quite a bit of power is actually lost in magnetic ballasts okay so when i'm thinking of
the the high frequency style ones if i put a 58 watt tubing i'm pretty much at 58 watts
but these star ones we've got a little bit more wattage and obviously the gearing yeah and
obviously the tubes warm up remember we used to say the lamps warm up as obviously fluorescent
tubes get to their peak operating temperature you can see actually the power is actually increasing
there so we're nudging up towards uh 70 watts so we'll use 70 watts for our calculation before
we look at the led retro sort of cost wise so we'll say so you're gonna know trump prove it
to me okay so we've got about 70 watts okay and i reckon that shot by looking at the doors open
six days a week and approximately 10 hours with the opening and obviously the finishing off
up cashing up in the end and looking at that shop i wouldn't think it take too long to cash up
either okay so you're going to do one tube for me over that period of time yep sorry okay we've got
ten hours two hours a day six days a week six days a week i can do the maths on your head don't need
joe robinson for this one i think that's 60 60 hours it is and let's go 52 weeks a year okay that
makes sense isn't it i suppose there's only a few days they're going to be shut that is 3120 hours
yep oh fluorescent tubes flicker away are they again yeah i'll just take it out of the way so
we're not having that so now gets back to energy price before we uh before we got the number
i remember obviously i've been the light in quite a while not quite as as long as gary when he's
old metric imperial measurement conversion there energy we used to do this at 10 pence a kilowatt
hour that was a that was an average price going back you know yeah the people watching this would
love us mp so we're gonna go for about 25 25 i think that's where we're at at the moment
obviously in the current climate energy prices are all over the place but you know that don't look
like we're going back to lower cost energy for a while so i think 25 pence a kilowatt hour however
by the time we've finished this video we might be near a 28 p so the sooner you get on with the
calculation the sooner we can have that energy price locked in yeah so we're going to convert
our 70 watts into kilowatts of 0.07 kilowatts and you're going to multiply that by 3 120 hours okay
and then we're going to come up with that 25p not 0.25 pounds so okay so this should come up with
the number to run just the one isn't it just the one one light fitting you're going to come up with
a number for me and it's going to be for those six days at 10 hours let's wait for drumroll please
54.60 a yeah for one for one i've made the maths nice and easy for you because when i
was down in the shop we actually replaced ten of these uh when your day five foot in my day
1500 mil long tubes at 58 watts so you can multiply that number by 10. yeah
546 pounds so let's say yeah so about 550 yeah yeah we'll go so nicely 550 pounds for one year
to run the lights in that shop yeah wow you know take a deep breath a lot of money isn't
it a lot of widgets to sell and uh screwdrivers paints yeah yeah sand paper anything like that so
that's that tube so now we're gonna change it and this is quite an easy process for the led okay so
like an easy process okay so just pop out this one yeah so this one's going to come out of here
let's have a little look inside here while you're fiddling around you can see the magnetic ballast
yeah you can no capacitory that shows how old it was yeah okay and it even had red and black flecks
connected to it which was that so we're going to take out the starter yep so i'm just going to take
out the starter itself and you're going to replace that starter and the replacing starter inside
i've taken one apart already has just a link so in other words we're going to link this out starter
effectively is just a switch isn't it it just open and close contacts so you've put the new one in so
that's in there which effectively just shorts out the starter position yeah so you would have to put
a sticker on there if you're doing it obviously you don't want to in the rare circumstance someone
would want to go back to fluorescent technology so reverse retrofit so they wanted to go back
to using lots of energy yeah and they managed to find some of these tubes yeah and they put
them in obviously yeah that's going to need to be replaced to start we don't want that shorted
out so there is there is a warning label should you do that now the tubes themselves got two
versions here there's lots of information on the end can have a little look at the end okay well
isn't it as it is phillips there's a reassuring amount of information and some all important
safety certification okay so it's two versions there's this version here will work with
magnetic control gear or director mains and that's the one with the blue cap that's the
blue cat and we've got the universal one here that has a little bit more electronics in it
and slightly higher output higher performance um that will work with universal it gives away work
both magnetic and high frequency ballast without having to change anything yeah and that's the
one i went for when i was down in that thing i saw the word universe and i thought i'm all right here
so i didn't have to think about anything i just installed those you said the other one's called
em when i see em on anything in light you know i think emergency yeah no so in the philips world
that yeah that's electromagnetic ballast so that's the big lump of iron we've got there okay so these
tubes don't work with emergency conversion so you may find instances where a fluorescent fitting
is being converted to emergency use so there's another set of control again they tend to generate
incredibly high voltages right that aren't suitable for these and you also said i could
use this one the em version make director mains yes so that would be where i was maybe i've got a
disconnect all together a little internal rewiring yeah am i thinking there may be where i've got the
high frequency style ones that that gear over time possibly starts to wane a little bit we want
to get rid of that yeah and just bang straight so yeah an old installation yeah electronic but it's
yeah getting towards the end of the life from the the control gear you can drop that out and
wire the mains direct to the end cap and you'll actually see on the end campaign is is it it is
labeled okay let's try it with a mains input if you wanted to do that oh yeah okay that makes
sense but of course i played it safe and went for the universal we went to the universe or i did
so you pop this one in for me now again you'll notice on the back this has a 270 degree light
output you can see actually down the back of the tube where the leds themselves are so that wants
to face the fitting yeah back into the fitting i would like to suggest for the record the first
one i put in i put it the wrong way around okay so you were back did you actually put the wrong
way around well no rick did yeah that's it i instructed him he'd done it wrong i was trying
to save rick there actually when we went down and changed so that's all in yep so i'm just going to
power that up we're going to have any dunking now so just instantly on instant light output yeah
that's good i like that and they say no warm-up period um no there is no we can see the power wow
is that 23 watts yeah so we'll go with uh we'll go with 23.7 for our calculation okay so we should be
a bit quicker on the calculations now 23.7 okay so you've got all the other numbers already in
my own mind i'm thinking this is going to be a big saving 23 watts what would your background
yeah a calculator today would you so there we go what's our numbers but we could probably buy
them in that shop still uh right 18 pounds and 40 well around about 18 pounds 50. okay
so um what would we be for just remind me what you're over 54 pounds 60. wow just take a deep
breath there i would suggest so we've changed out the tube and in that period of a year
wow what we saved ourselves overall for the 10 fittings i'm sure you can multiply that by 10 184
do your calculator yeah okay it's huge it's fantastic i would suggest this is
362 pounds a year serving in that shop just by popping out 10 tubes how long did it take
if we said two hours i probably did chat i gave the you know bloke behind the camera a little
bit of flannel because he allowed us to go in there and change those tubes there was a little
bit you know a little bit of relationship building before we started yeah however i think if he had
to watch the video of us changing the tubes before letting us go in and realize what he's gonna save
it would have been an absolute yes please and when can you start wouldn't it yeah and that
is yeah that's an absolute uh i think that's one of the fastest energy paybacks i've ever
seen and possibly an area you may not think of it everyone just assumes fluorescent tubes
yeah reasonably efficient we probably did our halogen lamps years ago what a simple process yeah
a totally simple process so if we just go through that process when main rick was there of course
rick got out the steps and it went up the steps and then obviously we replaced those lamps that
were in there we isolated the supply this can't be done live so we're not twisting these out uh and
taking out our tubes when the electrical energy is obviously in place and then it's a case of
dropping out your starters so in this case we had twin fittings so we had two starters in the twin
58 what that is the workhorse it's been you'll find them in water treatment plants car parks
everywhere you will yeah but as i said i managed to skip back the shop owner hasn't bothered for
years absolutely and then we put in obviously the ones that link out that starter remember you're
going to need to put a sticker on if ever the process gets reversed and in go the new tubes and
i would suggest the only thing that was a little bit nerve-wracking for me when we were there and
this is my time in electrical maintenance was the fact that the the enzo tubes tend to dry out don't
know those plastic ends tend to dry out so of course when you're twisting them there's always
a little bit of a nervous moment now gary's been on about ever since he got back he used to back
in the day when he actually used to do real work he claims there was a special spray he used to
put on the end caps to help with that process and i think it was one that also improved the
conductivity of the terminal so it's also like a cleaning agent but you wouldn't believe the
difference between a little squirt on the end and twist him round because one of the ones we did
it did lose a little bit of the material that was using to connect the end the cap together
when we twist it and you could just see the little bits breaking away obviously that is
probably if you can remember what that spray is drop it in to help gary's memory uh with that but
that's probably one of the biggest challenges of this process you know the retrofit itself is easy
and again that reason to switch the mains off you possibly don't know the condition of the fittings
that you're working with and that's why they're there the tubes themselves as i said earlier
safety certification the sort of quality and build quality you'd expect from uh from from signify um
you know not necessarily all tubes you'll see on the market have that level of safety so again
we go with trusted brands great performance we've got the five foot version of the 1500
millimeters if you live in in the uh in the metric world uh there's a lot of different flavors there
is a slight difference in output between the air the am version and the universal but again there
always was differences when you went back to th uses lots of different flavors in terms of the
phosphate in there in that project as you walk into a shop there's a whole raft of different
color temperatures being installed over the years but we opted for the 4 000 kelvin that we feel is
right for that sort of retail environment but you could go to 3 000 kelvin or 6500 degrees kelvin as
well but you know if you're not doing this type of retrofit right now this is a great energy-saving
pair back i think we painted a compelling story there for saving energy by simply removing the
tubes and inserting the core pro led tubes from philips however if you harbor a love affair for
the ones that are going off to recycling i've got some sad news for you come september 2023 they'll
no longer be manufactured i think this video deserves a follow-up video because we also said
that our fluorescent fittings could have the gear removed and the tubes go direct to main so in our
next video we'll go into that and show you how that can be easily achieved as well as looking
into the fact can we or can't we use these tubes in emergency fittings as always we want your
feedback do you think this is a great idea to save energy because we certainly do and you're thinking
now of projects where you can simply insert these core pro tubes in order to save energy for the
customer please leave all those comments below and we'll try and get back to as many as we can