2-Pin & 4-Pin Plug In Lamps Go LED
There's a good chance you may not have noticed the plug-in (PL) lamps being used in the businesses you visit each day. If you look up the next time you walk into a fast food restaurant, movie theater or hotel they'll be hard to miss. These bulbs have been available as compact fluorescent lights (CFL) for years but LED versions are now available. The commercial applications of plug-in lamps make them an ideal candidate to make the shift from CFL to LED. While most lighting is only on for a few hours at a time in your home, for a business the lights may stay on all day long 365 days a year. That means that the life of the lighting is critical as well as the energy consumption.
Philips 38333-1 18W 4-Pin CFL Bulb
Most 2-pin and 4-pin CFL bulbs have a rating of 10,000 life hours. If these lights stay on for 12 hours day, they'd end up having to be replaced in a little over two years. For businesses that are open 24 / 7 such as a hotel, you'd end up having to replace them in about 14 months. Even those estimates are pretty forgiven since it's possible that a bad ballast or other reasons cause your lights to go out early.
With LED 2-pin and 4-pin lamps that becomes much less of a concern since they last 5 times longer than their CFL counterparts. Not having to make any service calls or maintenance requests for 5 - 10 years would be a welcomed change of pace to General Managers all over the country. In addition to their long life they also use less power so instead of using 18 watts you can use just 7 watts.
When considering upgrading, the most important thing is making sure that the specs match. Currently every base type isn't available in LED but here's a list of several plug-in LED bulbs which are available at the moment.
2-Pin CFL Replacements
- Maxlite 73896 - replaces GX23 13W CFL bulbs (4100K Cool White color temperature)
- Maxlite 73895 - replaces GX23 13W CFL bulbs (5000K Daylight color temperature)
- Maxlite 73899 - replaces GX23 18W CFL bulbs (4100K Cool White color temperature)
- Maxlite 73900 - replaces GX23 18W CFL bulbs (5000K Daylight color temperature)
4-Pin CFL Replacements
- Maxlite 73903 - replaces G24q 13W CFL bulbs (4100K Cool White color temperature)
- Maxlite 73904 - replaces G24q 13W CFL bulbs (5000K Daylight color temperature)
- Maxlite 73907 - replaces G24q 18W CFL bulbs (4100K Cool White color temperature)
- Maxlite 73908 - replaces G24q 18W CFL bulbs (5000K Daylight color temperature)
Before you go ahead and start ordering any of these, there are a few things to consider. First is that you'll want to bypass the ballast before you install them. Also, it's important to note that you don't want to use any of these if an enclosed fixture.
