An often overlooked element of the green movement is just how new it is. When we first began looking into outfitting our restaurants with LED lighting, we figured it was a no brainer: replace our old, less efficient florescent tubes with low energy LED tubes. The problems began about two months after they were installed. The lights began to dim and fade,  eventually outputting as much light as a 20 watt bulb. What had once been a bright, natural white light was now a dim blue. After a call to an electrician and the manufacturer we discovered the problem: The tubes were receiving too much power. We had to step down the wattage at the fixtures to prevent the tubes from burning themselves up. A fresh round of tubes later and they are running great! No dimming or blueing, just beautiful white light. And at less than 6 watts per bulb our power draw is about 6 times less than with the same length florescent lights. All told we were saving about 40,000,000 watt/hours of electricity every year versus our old florescent lights. We were awestruck by that number. Afterall, we were using florescent lights, something that is already considered an energy efficient alternative to incadescent lighting. By switching to LED we were conserving enough energy every year to run a 60 watt light bulb everyday and every night for nearly 80 years.
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