Since some states are banning fluorescent lamps, I thought I'd provide a few data on the madness of that. The company I work for has been selling LED tubes to replace fluorescent tubes for several years now, mostly to local businesses. The LED tubes cost 2 or 3 times as much as fluorescent, but there are rebate programs that cover much of that cost - sometimes all of it. Even without rebates, an LED retrofit would still pay for itself in energy efficiency savings, and lower maintenance costs. With the rebates, going LED is a no-brainer.
I just saw a list (ranked by quantity sold) of items we sold to property management companies last year. Those are "third party management" companies that take care of office buildings, business parks, and other commercial properties. They're a big chunk of our business. We've helped most of them with at least one fluorescent-to-LED-tube retrofit job. Some of those are whole buildings. Some are one floor at a time.
Still, of the items we sold to those companies last year, the top 2 slots are 4' fluorescent tubes, and #3 is the recycling fee we charge for used-up 4' fluorescent tubes. The top-selling LED tube is a very distant 4th. In fact, 6 of the top 10 slots are 4' fluorescent tubes. Of the top 20 items, only 6 are LED products. The old-style T12 lamp, which was outmoded by T8 lamps years ago, is still hanging on at #9. That's a 40-watt fluorescent tube that could easily be replaced by an LED that uses less than a quarter of the energy, and was supposed to have been replaced by a more efficient fluorescent option a long time ago. Yet we have customers still buying thousands of them.
On the other hand: the LED tubes we sell are more likely to be split up between different part numbers, different wattages, and also between LED tubes that bypass the fluorescent ballast, and those which are ballast-dependent. And, with LEDs, older SKUs are replaced by newer items every 5 minutes. So it's not as if no one's buying the stuff. It's just not the only stuff they're buying.
