LED T8 / T5 Tubes and Fluorescent Lighting

Do a search on the CR4 database. There are some questions already posted. Unfortunately, there's no easy formula, because LEDs vary a lot not only by light intensity, but also by the angle they send the light up (or down). They typically have a narrow illumination cone, with commonly found values of 15 or 60 degrees. The best aproximation you should do is take the light intensity of the T8 or T5 lamps, and compare to the LED intensity too. BTW, are you looking for replacement bulbs on aquariums? Check out this discussion (copy and paste in your browser, for some reason I was not able to make the link work...) http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/29544/Compact-Fluorescent-Lamps I had some tips on replacement parts. The power required to replace the system is amazingy low.

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As the spectra are different, your best bet is the manufacturer of the LED tubes. They were made to replace fluo tubes so they would have to state the equivalence, just to make it easy for the customer.

The other thing you can do is to compare the lumens of both types of lighting devices. Lumen calculation takes into account spectral sensitivity of the human eye, so it will be representative to a great degree. For example, T8 LED tubes give about 1800LM, how doues that compare with its fluo counterpart?

Good Luck!