LED Lights Power Draw Measured

[Tom Bender]

My shop is lit by 4 ft x 2 tube fluorescent lights. They have 32 watt lamps (T8) with new blasts in 2011. In 2016 I replaced one fixture with a 4 ft LED from Lowes. There may be some loss of brightness in both types over time but since these are all at least a year old they are reasonable representations of what I can expect. (my shop time is about 16 hours/week) The LED is as close to exactly the same light output as the fluorescents as I can judge by eye.

Am I saving enough power to make it worth replacing the other 6 fixtures? Based on literature, sales and scientific, the answers range from "no savings because fluorescent is good also" to "these lights will cut your electricity bill in half"

This week I got a Kill-a-watt power meter.

51 watts flourescent

37 watts LED

14 watts x 16 hours/week x 52 weeks/year x .1717$/kwh = $2 per year per fixture.

This is not a big savings, however since the fluorescent tubes burn out pretty often, I may do it.

[Ole Anderson]

I replaced 72 fluorescent 4 bulb 4' troffers at church (288 bulbs) and applied for a commercial energy rebate from our local provider, DTE. They allowed a standard 112 watts per fixture (pre change-out) and the new bulbs being 12.5 watts each reduced the draw to 50 watts per fixture. That totals to 4.464 kw reduction in load. It netted us nearly $650 in rebates, or $2.25 per bulb. Interesting that in your case and ours, actual wattage is less than the sum of the fluorescent bulbs stated wattage. Edit: All ballasts were removed, as required by the incentive program.

[Bill Dufour]

I would do them one at a time as the bulbs/ballasts burn out. But then they will not match because by the end you can no longer buy the same fixtures. Or just replace the bulbs and keep the fixtures.
Bill

[Jerome Stanek]

I changed mine out. I used the existing fixtures and used the ones that bypassed the ballast

[Jim Becker]

All my shop lights are now LED. Some are totally new fixtures and some are the same old T12 fixtures with LED "tubes"...all LED for me is from Costco. The level of light is very striking since this change and I really haven't worried about whether or not there's any money savings. There likely is in my case since I was replacing older T12s, however.

[Art Mann]

My new shop is 100% LED bulbs in 8 foot, 4 tube T-8 fixtures. I don't care much about saving money. I am just tired of changing out fluorescent bulbs all the time.

[Curt Harms]

I haven't had LED tubes long enough to judge longevity but 4K tubes sure seem brighter, maybe because they don't have a dust layer yet. I was replacing fluorescent tubes more often than I should have. I've read that fluorescent tubes don't like to be turned on and off several times a day. LEDs don't care. I've been replacing tubes and removing ballasts as the fluorescent tubes get dim or burn out. The last pair of LED tubes I bought from Lowes came with a sticker that says the ballast has been removed and don't put regular fluorescent tubes in this fixture. That seems like a good idea.

[Matt Schrum]

I've switched over to LED's from fluorescents-- and while energy savings did factor in, I've found bigger benefits to be the increased brightness in my shop, no humming/buzzing, and no warm up time. My shop is better insulated at my current place, but my last garage was detached and unheated. in the winter I bet I was lucky to get 70% brightness out of my old fluorescent lights (compared to warmer months) just because they wouldn't fully warm up.

Last shop, I noticed a huge increase in brightness when switching to LED tubes-- so much so that when I moved, the first thing I did to the new shop was get rid of the fluorescent fixtures and put in 12 evenly spaced 4' LED tubes. It's like an operating room in there-- which is great.

[Rod Sheridan]

There isn't much of a gain when going from T8 to LED.

At work I look at the cost reduction every year and we're not there yet.

At home I have T8 lighting, it would never pay for me to convert to LED unless they drop to about twice the cost of T8 lamps......Regards, Rod.

[Bob Bouis]

The specs on T8 lamps are often misleading. The ballast consumes energy and it's not included in the watts claimed on the bulb -- but the bulb isn't actually using its claimed wattage either; how much it draws depends on the ballast. The brightness of the bulb likewise depends on the ballast. The end result is that some T8s are literally almost 50% brighter than others, and most people have no idea which one they have.

My big thing is that LEDs can be switched on and off repeatedly without shortening their life, and they come on at full brightness regardless of the temperature. So LEDs work very well with an occupancy sensor switch. Saves energy -- and time and peace of mind. No more fumbling for switches in the dark or worrying about whether you turned the lights off.

[Ben Rivel]

There isn't much of a gain when going from T8 to LED.

At work I look at the cost reduction every year and we're not there yet.

At home I have T8 lighting, it would never pay for me to convert to LED unless they drop to about twice the cost of T8 lamps......Regards, Rod.
Same here. I also have yet to find good name branded 4FT LED lights that put out the 5000K 2900 lumens my Phillips T8 fluorescent bulbs do.

[David Utterback]

Upgraded my lighting with 12 of the 4K, 4 ft LED a couple of years ago. At less than $13 per fixture, it was a bargain and eliminated the darker areas of my shop. I had previously used an inadequate number of T-8 fixtures and spot lighting. I believe that the improvement has upgraded my work. :)

[Carlos Alvarez]

I pretty much never have tubes fail, so I guess I'm stuck with them forever. Maybe it's weather? My shop lights tend to be on for several hours about four days a week. I can't find any justification to change existing ones for LED, but the last time I added lighting it was all LED strips.

[Dan Friedrichs]

I pretty much never have tubes fail,

+1.

Buy good T8 bulbs, and they'll last awfully long. These are rated 60k hours:
https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/92898/USH-3000612.html

[Carlos Alvarez]

Honestly I have no idea what I bought. Just what was at Home Depot. I recall failures of the old big tubes decades ago, but haven't replaced a single modern bulb in at least six years, probably longer.

[Greg R Bradley]

People just seem to lose their brains when thinking about converting to LED. It's almost like a religion or something where they "just have faith" that they are brighter and last longer even when faced with the reality.

I've regularly looked at converting 996 T-8 bulbs in one business every 5 years when they are due for replacement with 24x7x365 use. That is 43,600 hours but we have had some failures when we tried to push them to the 52,500 hours when replacing them at 6 years. The failure rate with LED is too high, the light drop off too fast, and minimal cost/energy savings. All the cheap LEDs fail way too fast and since the phosphors are similar to florescent that give them a pleasing CRI, they get ugly with time. Anyone thinking of using LED as a way to stop replacing bulbs is using the wrong florescents or just hasn't seen the effect of their misjudgement yet.

I am saddened just about every time I go to Costco and see some fool loading up a cart with a bunch of $20 LEDs. Those units make a lot of sense when you buy one or two for task lighting and temp use but when you buy 30 and start using them for shop lights, you are a fool. I stuck 4 in an area for temp use until we could have lighting added in that area. In 2 years, the lighting fall off is noticeable. They will clearly hit the garbage before making it 4 years.

I changed over 6 offices, each with four 2 lamp florescents. I used a different brand of LED conversion of each. After 3 years, every office has at least one dead bulb and several have partly dead lamps also. Maybe worth doing the conversion as they were T-12 originally, the conversion would have been a horrible failure if they had been T-8 fixtures. Not to mention every office lost some light and most required careful rotation of the LED bulbs to give acceptable lighting. T-12 and T8 have even light, not the overly directional crap of LEDs.

Here is what gains you light: CLEAN Fixtures & covers and any NEW light fixtures. Also critically important is GOOD florescent bulbs, not the crap at the BORG.

LEDs are working out pretty well in less used areas with motion sensors. LED have some real advantages in lights that go on/off many times a day.

[Ben Rivel]

I pretty much never have tubes fail, so I guess I'm stuck with them forever. Maybe it's weather? My shop lights tend to be on for several hours about four days a week. I can't find any justification to change existing ones for LED, but the last time I added lighting it was all LED strips.
Me neither.

[Carlos Alvarez]

The only thing sadder than treating LEDs like a religion is the anti-LED people who treat that as a religion.

LEDs are getting better and cheaper every day. I've finally converted the entire house except for the shop, and wouldn't go back. It's no longer even relevant if we leave lights on all the time. I wanted an outside motion light, then realized that with a 7w LED, there's not even a reason to spend the money for the motion fixture at all. Just leave it on.

[Chris M Pyle]

Which Costco LEDs did everyone purchase?

[Jim Becker]

Which Costco LEDs did everyone purchase?

Feit Electric...whatever was the deal du jour at the time. The specific model has changed. In my shop, I have two different versions of the fixture plus a bunch of the retrofit LED "tubes" in T12 fixtures.

[Mike Heidrick]

In 12+ years I have had 8 for my 24 T12 bulbs burn out in my old shop. I do plan to replace those with costco LEDs fixtures. New shed has 18 6-bulb T5 High output lights. A $20 Costco LED fixture at 16' is not going to give me what I want. Dont much care what it costs. I spray foamed the ceiling - that crap will NEVER pay back money wise but the comfort and the material properties for the env in there are amazing.

[Bob Bouis]

I put T5HOs in my shop about five years ago. It proved to be a mistake -- I didn't have any bulb failures, but all the bulbs came unglued, for want of a better word, as the caps are loose and are only attached by wiring or whatever it is that connects them to the inside of the tube. Out of six four-lamp fixtures, one became inexplicably dim and one had two of the lamps quit.

They also make a *lot* of heat and aren't terribly efficient in terms of light output per watt.

[Curt Harms]

There isn't much of a gain when going from T8 to LED.

At work I look at the cost reduction every year and we're not there yet.

At home I have T8 lighting, it would never pay for me to convert to LED unless they drop to about twice the cost of T8 lamps......Regards, Rod.

For me it was about more than cost. I expect the LEDs to be more durable when being power cycled several times per day and as stated above the LEDs sure seem brighter no matter what the labels state.

[Jack Frederick]

When I built my shop, 30x34, three yrs ago I installed 16 4'x2 bulb LED's from Costco ($35@). Set them up in quadrants with motion sensing for auto off (required by code here). nice lighting and they come up right away rather than having to wait for fluorescents to warm to the task.

[Dan Schrecongost]

Interesting that in your case and ours, actual wattage is less than the sum of the fluorescent bulbs stated wattage.
This is usually the case with electronic ballasts, which can be designed to drive standard T-8 lamps to produce normal light levels, high or reduced light levels. Usually a pair of "32 watt" T-8 lamps and a normal light output electronic ballast will draw 59-60 watts.

Older fixtures with magnetic ballasts usually draw 7% to 10% more than the nominal wattage of the lamps (tubes). Magnetic ballasts don't perform well when it is cold. When viewed through a digital camera, you will usually see yellow-ish bars of discoloration in the viewfinder; electronic ballasts operate at much higher frequencies and these bars do not appear.

There is a wide range in LED replacement lamps in terms of watts drawn and light output (measured in lumens). Overall, LEDs produce more light per watt, but your energy savings and relative change in light level depends on the specific product you select. Do pay attention to the color, which is rated in degrees Kelvin. Higher numbers indicate a more blue color of light that dampens your perception of colors, especially reds.

[Jerome Stanek]

When I changed mine out I only ordered enough for half the fixtures as I was only going to change out the half of my shop that I use and not the storage half. I ended up only needing every other fixture and it was still brighter then the T8 I had so I used the other half in the storage part also. I did change out the bulbs in the CNC room also and that to was way brighter.

[Dan Rude]

You might check out IBuild it on You-tube he even made his own fixtures for them. They come on right away and no Ballast to go bad. I have replaced all my lights with LED. Savings can be small, but they come on right away. I started years ago when, they were more expensive than now. Overall, my failures happen in the warranty period. I also replaced to get away from the Hazards Material in the florescent bulbs. I always dreaded clean up if they broke. Dan

[Bill Dufour]

Be aware you need to spend a lot of money to get a true RMS meter that accurately measures AC power. measuring ac amps with a medium price meter is not accurate. But comparing relative amps with the same meter at the same voltage is probably good enough.
Bill D.

[Jim Andrew]

Bought 4 sylvania 4100k led bulbs to replace the bulbs in a T12 troffer fixture. Cost 7$ each bulb, supposed to do away with ballast, but my problem is finding a wiring diagram for re-wiring the tombstones without ballasts?

[Ole Anderson]

Bought 4 sylvania 4100k led bulbs to replace the bulbs in a T12 troffer fixture. Cost 7$ each bulb, supposed to do away with ballast, but my problem is finding a wiring diagram for re-wiring the tombstones without ballasts? (from my 9-22-17 thread): My 4' troffers had a metal cover down the middle, accessible from the bottom, you just squeeze and pop off to expose the ballasts. Make sure you don't have shunted tombstone caps (I think only are used with instant start, not rapid start ballasts). If so, they need to be replaced. Cut the wires to the end caps fairly short on the end opposite where the 120v wires come in. Those go to the dead end of the new tubes. Leave the wires longer on the other end. Pop off the end caps to see which wire is the common, on mine, I think they were yellow. Common goes to the white (neutral) 120v incoming. Strip and twist the other three wires together (black, blue, red) then wire nut those to the incoming 120 v hot black wire. Toss the ballasts and replace the cover, install the tubes and you are done. After the first one they go easy. I think I spend 15-20 minutes per 4 tube troffer working on a Baker scaffold.

[Joe Jensen]

Its interesting the comments on replacing Fluorescent tubes all the time. I live in Arizona with a very hot garage. I have 36 four foot bulbs. they used to be T12 and a few years ago I upgraded the ballasts and switched to t8. I bought the troffer fixtures in 1990 used (very used) with bulbs for $10 each. those bulbs lasted a long time and between 1990 and maybe 2014 I replaced less than 12 (bought a full box and didn't use them all). I put in T8s like 3 years ago and have not had a failure yet.

I am building a new much larger shop and I am currently thinking I will go with these bulbs.

https://www.lonyung.com/displayproduct.html?proID=2273585

1.5" by 1.5" by 8 feet and they connect end to end. Looks like I can do the entire shop with the right foot candles of illumination for $1500 or so. But I will need to buy a bunch of spares as I expect fallout from the chinese LEDs. Or is it silly to go with something like this. I really want low profile. Has anyone found fixtures without ballast for LED tubes? That format will likely be around a long time. But those of course will hand further out from the ceiling.

[Curt Harms]

Joe, if you're so inclined you could pretty much 'roll your own' fixtures. You can buy tombstones with a hole to be able to bolt the tombstone to a flat surface so the thickness is little more than the tombstone + wire. Something like this but with a round hole for the screw/bolt instead of square.

https://www.amazon.com/JACKYLED-20-pack-Non-shunted-Fluorescent-Replacements/dp/B071X8F85K/ref=sr_1_42?ie=UTF8&qid=1521718323&sr=8-42&keywords=fluorescent+tombstone

[Greg R Bradley]

Its interesting the comments on replacing Fluorescent tubes all the time. I live in Arizona with a very hot garage. I have 36 four foot bulbs. they used to be T12 and a few years ago I upgraded the ballasts and switched to t8. I bought the troffer fixtures in 1990 used (very used) with bulbs for $10 each. those bulbs lasted a long time and between 1990 and maybe 2014 I replaced less than 12 (bought a full box and didn't use them all). I put in T8s like 3 years ago and have not had a failure yet.

I am building a new much larger shop and I am currently thinking I will go with these bulbs.

https://www.lonyung.com/displayproduct.html?proID=2273585

1.5" by 1.5" by 8 feet and they connect end to end. Looks like I can do the entire shop with the right foot candles of illumination for $1500 or so. But I will need to buy a bunch of spares as I expect fallout from the chinese LEDs. Or is it silly to go with something like this. I really want low profile. Has anyone found fixtures without ballast for LED tubes? That format will likely be around a long time. But those of course will hand further out from the ceiling.
You are buying into a proprietary fixture that only hooks to others from the same "manufacturer". There will be 100 new manufacturers this year and 100 gone. How are you going to get anything warrantied and there will be lots of failures.
This week, I bought 4 of each chinese LED ready T8 fixtures. All the 8' were wired incorrectly with both hot and neutral to the same tombstones on on end which connect to on pin, a dead short. Nothing connected to the other end. The 4 4' had one correct and three different impossible combinations. Two tombstones but slots for one, etc. I only had to take them 3 blocks back to the distributor, but what if they had to go back to china?
21 months ago we cloned an office into another building. Instead of 12 T-8 wraps, this office got 12 1x4' flat panels from the box store:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Commercial-Electric-1-ft-x-4-ft-50-Watt-White-Integrated-LED-Edge-Lit-Flat-Panel-Flushmount-74031-HD-G2/301637287
3 of 12 are dead with another failing. And typically, no advantage over good T-8 flourescents even if they did last the specified 50k hours. These FIXTURES are supposed to hit the trash with a 30% light loss after 50k hours. The old office uses good T-8 that last 50k hours with a 10% light loss, when they get new tubes. These LED have a little less efficiency with the less efficiency resulting in more heat. Same amount if light directly below on the desks with a bit less in cabinets and book cases at the edges of the office.
Clearly NOT my idea to go from 58 watt 5800 lumen florescents to 50 watt 4000 lumens LED.

I'm also concerned about your desire for low profile possibly meaning you have a low ceiling. If so, you need to have care for even lighting as LED tend to have narrower light patterns. Can you post the shop dimensions and layout?

[Peter Christensen]

.......I am building a new much larger shop and I am currently thinking I will go with these bulbs.

https://www.lonyung.com/displayproduct.html?proID=2273585

1.5" by 1.5" by 8 feet and they connect end to end. Looks like I can do the entire shop with the right foot candles of illumination for $1500 or so. But I will need to buy a bunch of spares as I expect fallout from the chinese LEDs. Or is it silly to go with something like this. I really want low profile. Has anyone found fixtures without ballast for LED tubes? That format will likely be around a long time. But those of course will hand further out from the ceiling.


I bought the 5 foot version of those fixtures for my place. 6 for the garage and 16 for my 640 square foot shop (100 foot candles per square foot in the shop). They have been in use for 14 months without any issues. You can connect up to 200 watts worth of lights together. So in my case up to 5 lights as they are equivalent to 40 watts but I only have 4. If you wire them individually they can be dimmed, not when in a line. You get a 10" or so connector to wire to the box and to connect the lights to each other they give you a 10" cable and a short plastic connector if you want the row uninterrupted. They don't look to be proprietary to me but I haven't run around looking at others. With the cables you could bend the row around a corner. If you want longer cables tell them when you order and they will add them for a small charge. A couple bucks for a 3' one. You get some clips to attach the fixture to the ceiling, each with a single screw. I'll buy from them again if/when the time comes.

[Joe Jensen]

Here are some images of the shop footprint and the vaulted ceiling heights. The first pic shows shading where the vaults go. The yellow green has a been running up and down and the blue shaded area has a beam running left to right. The next two pics show the ceiling heights for each vaulted area. The last pic shows the footprint of the shop. There is also an 18ft wide by 7.5ft deep part of the shop on the left of the shop footprint drawing that has a lower vaulted ceiling, no details shared for that. I think it goes to about 12ft high in the middle.

382146382147382148382149

[Peter Christensen]

My shop is 24’ x 28’ with 9’ at the low side and 11 1/2’ at the peak, much like your smaller room. I have no shadows. The light is even and very bright.

[Carlos Alvarez]

I bought the 5 foot version of those fixtures for my place. 6 for the garage and 16 for my 640 square foot shop (100 foot candles per square foot in the shop). They have been in use for 14 months without any issues. You can connect up to 200 watts worth of lights together. So in my case up to 5 lights as they are equivalent to 40 watts but I only have 4. If you wire them individually they can be dimmed, not when in a line. You get a 10" or so connector to wire to the box and to connect the lights to each other they give you a 10" cable and a short plastic connector if you want the row uninterrupted. They don't look to be proprietary to me but I haven't run around looking at others. With the cables you could bend the row around a corner. If you want longer cables tell them when you order and they will add them for a small charge. A couple bucks for a 3' one. You get some clips to attach the fixture to the ceiling, each with a single screw. I'll buy from them again if/when the time comes.

Those look great. I keep wondering why the LED fixtures are shaped to mimic the tube fixtures unnecessarily.

And no, they are not proprietary connectors, I have a bunch of those Mickey Mouse cords sitting around as they are used on various electronics.

[Greg R Bradley]

I was assuming these fixtures were plugged into each other so the "proprietary" part meant they wouldn't just plug into another fixture when these fail. I'm assuming a commercial shop so no way you are going to have exposed cords in between. Is this a hobby shop?

There are no IES files listed, a huge red flag that these aren't a serious item. Also, 80% "Lumen Retention" at 6,000 hours is pathetic. And that is their claim, not backed up by any photometric data. That is almost as bad as the Costco Feit LEDs. Now if it is going to take you a decade to hit 6,000 hours in a hobby shop that might be fine. That's 11 hours per week for 10 years. That's 1/10 the performance of good T-8 fluorescents. Even ancient tech T-12 do twice that good.

4' LED ready 2 lamp strips are $12-13 and good LED bulbs are about the same. That means $250 for 40' of continuous lighting at 1000-1500 lumens per foot. https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/200882/PLT-10916.html

[Carlos Alvarez]

The lifetime hours are a good point with shops. Many only get used a few hours a week. Mine is also a cigar lounge and general neighborhood hangout, so the lights are on more than they are off.

[Peter Christensen]

Greg you seem to have a bias against the lights and that's fine for your circumstances. You have lower costs than this side of the line because of market size. I have to add the extras of shipping, brokerage, taxes, exchange and availability that you don't. There are many US companies that won't sell to Canadians. That's why I bought the best I could find and cut out the middlemen by buying direct from China. They make most of the LED fixtures anyway and the money saved goes into other needs of my woodworking pastimes. Yup I am a hobby woodworker. My delivered costs were lower than the what you are recommending.

I bought mine because.
* I couldn't find un-ballasted fixtures anywhere on this side of the border.
* I wasn't going to get ballasted ones only to have to have to discard the ballasts. Ballasted fixtures cost more than what I bought.
* These are UL approved fixtures that the electrical contractor wiring the house would put in. He wouldn't consider anything non approved. That ruled out removing blasts from new or old fixtures.
* I didn't want to buy tubes from another source and pay as much or more that what I bought.
* Equivalent LED fixtures locally were at least 3 to 4 times the cost.
* The under 1 1/2" thickness means less hanging below the ceiling. Reduces but doesn't eliminate the chance of hitting it.

We all have different circumstances and act accordingly.

[Carlos Alvarez]

Peter, where did you buy them? I'm certainly going to get a couple.

[Peter Christensen]

I bought them through Alibaba because of their Trade Assurance Protection. Search for Lonyung LED Lighting and look for the ones you want or go to their site and look at the models there. You can buy direct from them if you prefer. The part number I bought is LY-T5SL 1500-40 and cost at the time $17.35US x 22lights = $381.70US plus shipping by FedEX for $168.00 for a total of $574.19US. I don't know what shipping would be for a couple lights. From when the order was placed to my door was about two weeks.

[Carlos Alvarez]

Huh, that part number doesn't work. If you saved a ilnk, post it, if not no big deal, I'll keep searching.

[Peter Christensen]

If you look at the T5 lights it will be in the chart of part numbers and specs for the different lengths from 2’ to 8’ (metric equivalents).

Try this link.
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Lonyung-integrated-Double-T5-LED-tube_1928312819.html?spm=a2700.7724838.2017115.329 .6790457dytIKRu

There is a message box at the bottom of the page to ask questions etc. They can give you the price and what the shipping will be.

[Daniel Dupius]

There is one more benefit that LED has over florescent lights. Florescent lights flash like a strobe light. They flash at about 120 Hz (every time the sine wave crosses "zero"). Your eyes see it, but your brain cannot process the info that fast (about 100 Hz is the limit) so they look like they are on all the time. This strobe effect although not noticeable causes eye fatigue and with some people headaches. LED's are a DC device, so they don't flash and are better for your eyes.

[Carlos Alvarez]

There is one more benefit that LED has over florescent lights. Florescent lights flash like a strobe light. They flash at about 120 Hz (every time the sine wave crosses "zero"). Your eyes see it, but your brain cannot process the info that fast (about 100 Hz is the limit) so they look like they are on all the time. This strobe effect although not noticeable causes eye fatigue and with some people headaches. LED's are a DC device, so they don't flash and are better for your eyes.

Not quite accurate. LEDs in these fixtures are DC powered from an AC source. That means they still get pulsed. See the waveform below:

383170

If the power supply has lots of filtering, it can become flat, clean, non-pulsed DC. But most cheap power supplies still pass some of the pulse along, and the LEDs flash also. In fact an LED is MUCH more sensitive to this and will flicker much more. Flourescent and incandescent lights don't respond instantly; there is some power down/power up delay. LEDs are really instant. They also have a very tight voltage threshold, so while other lights may just be dim with low voltage, an LED will just shut down.

And the fluorescent sensitivity thing has been mostly debunked anyway.

Here's the first hit on a quick search:

Why Do LEDs Flicker?
When a new source comes to market, the issue of flicker bubbles to the surface. However, LEDs may oscillate in light output even more than incandescent or fluorescent lamps did, says PNNL’s Miller. Unlike HID or fluorescent, solid-state lighting is a direct current (DC) device, meaning that as long as constant current is supplied, the LED will illuminate without flicker, Benya says.
In the case of a simple LED circuit in which no constant current regulation is implemented vis-à-vis a driver, the LED’s brightness will vary in phase with the cycle of the alternating current. When a driver exists, it presents both a source and a solution. Rectifying the AC to DC conversion causes a ripple in the voltage and current output from the driver to the LED. This ripple typically occurs at twice the frequency of the incoming line voltage—120 hertz in the U.S. The LED output then correlates with the output waveform of the driver.
Dimming is the other primary cause of flicker. Conventional dimmers, such as TRIAC (meaning an electronic component that can conduct current in either direction) dimmers, modulate the current by extending the off time in the on–off cycle, reducing light output. Pulse width modulation (PWM) dims LEDs by turning them on and off at frequencies that ideally exceed 200 hertz. However, Benya says, “if you do PWM at a low enough frequency, such as our normal power line frequency, then once again, we’ve introduced a very high percentage of flicker.”

[Greg R Bradley]

There is one more benefit that LED has over florescent lights. Florescent lights flash like a strobe light. They flash at about 120 Hz (every time the sine wave crosses "zero"). Your eyes see it, but your brain cannot process the info that fast (about 100 Hz is the limit) so they look like they are on all the time. This strobe effect although not noticeable causes eye fatigue and with some people headaches. LED's are a DC device, so they don't flash and are better for your eyes.
Fluorescents pulsing at 60Hz, so on/off 120 times a second, is only for the magnetic ballasts used in the original T-12 fixtures. Obsolete for decades now. Electronic ballast cycle at a typical rate of 20,000 Hz. LED have a BIG problem with flashing, more than modern fluorescents.
Both are affected by the quality of the fixture and there is a lot a variation in all of them, as well as most lighting powered by 60Hz AC power.

[Bob Bouis]

The t8 LED tubes tend to have poor quality drivers, too.

[Carlos Alvarez]

Not to beat you up on it Daniel, but would you share where you got this misinformation about flicker? It's an honest curiosity. Working in tech, I'm constantly battling tech myths and always wonder how they came to be.