Please post what you find when you do this led conversion. I was thinking of doing the same thing to mine.
On my Former 3.0 case I replaced the lower ballasts with an LED set purchased at Depot. I mounted it using two of the existing holes from ballasts. It worked great and kept the lower shelf cool too. Definitely worth it.
got the bulbs in this past weekend, sooooo easy, they are a direct replacement for the CFL bulbs as they have built in ballast bypass. They come in multiple color temperatures from cool white (yellowish, 3000k) to Bright White, 5000k). They can also function in a ballast bypass mode, so that if the ballast fails I can just rewire to bypass the ballast and remove it altogether. I got them from bulbs.com
TCP 9W 2' 5000K T8 Glass LED Bulb, Ballast Compatible
From my research:
Upside
- ease of replacement with no rewiring or replacement of the fixture
- energy savings of LED with a comparable brightness (1225) to I think 1250 for the CFL version.
- less strain on the ballast, so less likely to fail over time.
- can work in Ballast bypass mode, so with some pretty simple rewiring you can remove the ballast and run these right from the line power.
- Cost, thought I don't think $12 is too much for a nearly permanent bulb.
- with Ballast Bypass the Ballast is still drawing some current so the energy savings is not quite as good as straight up LED (about 10-20% worse).
Front only
and all lights